THEY MUST NOT USE THIS YET IN TOP FLIGHT
IT IS already clear that the video referee system needs plenty of development before it is ready for the Premier League. It certainly cannot be used next season.
The Willian blunder in the Chelsea- Norwich game was simply not good enough — watching the TV replays it was ‘clear and obvious’ that Willian had been fouled and Chelsea should have had a penalty.
There is no blame attached to referee Graham Scott. Plenty of viewers, including me, thought Willian had dived from the first view. However, once we saw a slowmotion replay, the expectation was that the decision would be overturned. The fact it wasn’t is apparently a result of the video referee, in this instance Mike Jones, not seeing the same slowmotion replay we all saw on TV. That is ludicrous and must change.
Had he seen what BBC viewers saw, he would have advised the referee to either overturn his decision or at least look at the footage on the pitchside monitor.
I have been doing a virtually identical role as the video ref for TV over the past two seasons so I do understand the difficulties and frustrations they are experiencing. In my role, I have multiple screens offering camera angles from the dozen or so cameras around Premier League pitches.
What has struck me working on TV is the match director and their team are vastly experienced people who have a great understanding of broadcasting matches. They are assisted by as many as eight ‘replay machine operators’ who constantly review incidents to ensure they offer the best possible angles to the match director. That means I don’t need to watch multiple screens — it is done for me and the viewers at home.
At Stockley Park in west London, where the video ref is based, they only have two technicians trying to do the same job for the video ref and his assistant as the small army does for live TV production companies.
To make the job even more difficult, due to technical issues, they cannot use super-slow-mo replays which are often employed by TV companies. If this continues, plenty of mistakes are inevitably going to follow.
In other sports they did not originally use the broadcasters’ images but after numerous errors they started to use TV pictures and results improved.
REFEREES’ chief Mike Riley and his team can only judge incidents from the angles they are offered and these are not the same as we see on our television screens. So far they have ‘ got away with it’ as the end results have not been affected.
In the first game involving a video ref, it could have gone horribly wrong as they didn’t see the angle I had on BT Sport showing that Glenn Murray had not handled the ball in scoring Brighton’s winner against Crystal Palace. If he had, I do not believe the video ref would have picked it up.
We were told that this is an experiment and the system will improve. Technology has highlighted and can prove — thanks to super slow-mo replays — that clear errors have been made, which is why we need video refs.
But if video refs are denied access to super-slow-mo they will be unable to offer advice in the majority of incidents. If that is the case, you have @MAIL_ @MAIL_GPoll to question GPoll why video refs are being trialled.