A TMO for Gaelic games? For the love of God… No!
USING TMOs to solve contentious issues in Gaelic games is like smelling gas and striking a match to better investigate. This would be a match made in vituperative recrimination, a union so unholy that the fallout would leave the people of Ireland wandering around with blood trickling sadly, insistently from their ears.
Let’s stop this one before it goes past the status of thinking out loud.
A meeting of the GAA’s management committee last week discussed ‘a preliminary report on the use of a TMO’ (television match official). In the interests of thoroughness, it is commendable that the ins and outs of the topic were investigated, but one hopes that the document concluded with three words filling a page: Good God No.
Those possessed of a more adventurous spirit argue that if the technology was used to simply determine clear-cut, black-or-white quandaries, then it would be no more controversial than Hawkeye, currently deployed generally successfully.
Any glitches have arisen over technological failures, but they have been few and far between, too.
However, deciding whether a ball or a sliothar has gone over the bar or gone wide is an easily contained task: it’s either a score or it’s not.
With video technology, the big danger is in mission creep and, as other sports have shown, that is an inevitable consequence of its introduction.
It may start as a good intention to avoid controversies like the O’Loughlin Gaels ‘goal that wasn’t’ in the club hurling final, but goalline technology would correct those errors.
Once a video official was in place, demands would follow for them to be used in reviewing controversial fouls, penalty calls and in adjudging whether players should be sent off or not.
The pitches from pleading managers and officials are easily imagined. Think of the effort that players put in, only to have months of training sacrificed because of a mistake by a match official.
Think of the millions brought in for the GAA by the sacrifices of these players and their coaches and managers. They are nothing more than pawns in a cynical game.
It doesn’t take much to get some in the intercounty milieu to lapse into martyrdom, and their special pleading would become unbearable if video technology was ever introduced.
This is an ideal opportunity to learn from the experiences of others.
VAR has been a cause of unending headaches in soccer, to the extent that some of its most passionate champions have wondered if it’s been worth the bother.
The big problem has been expectation. Teams and their supporters expected perfection once the technology was brought in, but they’ve come to realise that adjudication is still in the hands of humans.
So, if an official draws one of the lines used to judge offside in the incorrect place, then the wrong decision will follow.
Cue days of fury.
Once there is a person involved, the mistakes to which any of us are prey can and will happen. But the mindless anger ordinarily directed at match officials has become even more vicious in the age of VAR, because of the mistaken belief that infallibility would follow.
Another problem has arisen in rugby, where the minutes it takes to come to a decision has turned an 80-minute match into a 100-minute experience.
Games have gone even longer than that, as referees and their assistants pore over footage and consult with their TMOs.
This has led to cases where the on-field officials have seemed reluctant to make a call, and it prompted one of the most famous referees in rugby history to call for a change in rugby’s relationship with technology in the aftermath of a World Cup that featured a number of controversies.
‘At the moment, it feels like the TMO is refereeing matches and that is not a road that rugby should be going down. While technology has its place in the game, how it is used currently needs to change,’ Nigel Owens wrote in a Welsh newspaper last year.
If the certainty of controversy is not reason enough for the GAA to avoid TMOs like the plague, then the unavoidable consequences of those controversies should be.
They would further pollute the toxic culture of disrespect for match officials in Gaelic games, a pervasive problem whose seriousness continues to be overlooked by too many stakeholders in football and hurling.
As it is, far too many players, managers and officials cannot accept that humans make mistakes. Imagine their wrath if someone with resort to technology makes a bad call.
The possible upsides are outweighed by the certain downsides.
Good. God. No.