VAR is not the answer to ref justice

HUDDERSFIELD Town’s 1-0 win over Hull kept up their gravity-defying season and sees them well in the hunt for a play-off place still.

For a team many had bottom three in their pre-season predictions to be top three in April is quite the feat.

This is all before a season-defining run of fixtures in eight days when Luton come to the John Smith’s Stadium on Monday, followed by a visit from QPR and then a trip to Middlesbrough.

Lots to talk about then, loads to discuss, but post-final whistle on Friday night we come back to the same thing, and it’s not Town’s form.

Referees have featured heavily in Town’s season to date, and in several other teams’ fortunes. Yet again Championship officiating came under the spotlight, and yet again it takes away from what we should be talking about, the football.

I’m going to spoil the point of this article now by saying we need to stop scrutinising referees to this degree or accept VAR (or the baby version being explored for lower league football at least) and there can really be no in between for any of us. Don’t worry, I will not be defending the decisions made on Friday night so please read on, but also don’t expect a definitive answer to the issues either.

Huddersfield Town were denied two clear penalties on Friday night, one the referee should have given without a shred of doubt, but another he would need help on. Josh Koroma was fouled in the box, the referee had clear sight, it was a penalty.

The first-half handball however was nowhere near as clear-cut, and that’s where if we want those given, VAR is possibly the only way.

Why you say? Okay, first issue, the linesman can’t see that ball hit his arm, as it definitely does below the T-shirt line where a handball, and therefore a penalty should be given. He’s keeping up with play and Jordan Rhodes is obscuring his view across the line, therefore there is no way he can give it.

He’s on the ‘wrong’ side for the cross so not looking at the defender, the way Rhodes peels to the back into space blocks his view.

So to the referee Jeremy Simpson. There are two issues here – position and real time speed.

Simpson is in the only position he can be, 15 yards outside the box looking at the cross coming in from that side, any closer he’s getting in the players’ way and he’s the right distance to be able to see the action unfold.

Unfortunately, he’s also at the perfect angle to see the diving header and direction of the ball as just that, a diving header. In real time, at that speed from that angle, it looks to him like a header, and with no signal from anywhere else he gives it as such. None of these facts are excuses, but they are reasons.

The answer to that one would be those three little letters that cause so much debate among football fans despite by its very nature it supposedly being a system to end arguments.

It’s fair here that I state my own view on VAR, I don’t like it but I get why it has to exist. I think it stymies a game, I think it hurts football’s best moments, and I think players are adapting to it in the worst way.

I covered a Premier League game this season at a top-six club where a goal was scored from a corner.

You could quite clearly and distinctly hear a defender and then the club captain of the team now 2-1 behind scream at the referee “VAR!” – not foul, or handball, or anything else, just please try to find something for us.

That, to me anyway, isn’t football. It does eliminate some of the worst blunders though and is upping standards at the very top as players don’t get away with as much.

In some cases it can be a price worth paying when so much is on the line.

The issue is the thing I hate more than VAR is the endless scrutiny of referees that has led us to a crisis where undeniably the quality is suffering and not enough people want the job anymore.

In truth, who can blame them either. At local level you get abused and sometimes even physically assaulted, a system created by the treatment officials receive on television and in the media.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a step through the leagues to professionalism where at each level you receive abuse from bigger crowds until if you reach the top two tiers you get it from pundits too.

Match of the Day, Sky Sports, TalkSPORT, BT Sport are all culpable and all have spent more time looking at refereeing decisions than has proved healthy to our game.

Town were denied two clear penalties on Friday night. They were also denied a clear goal against Sheffield United, and a penalty there too.

Sorba Thomas was adjudged to have fouled against West Brom where clearly it was a dive, a clever one but nevertheless a dive, and a penalty was given against him. They have also been on the wrong end of more than one extremely tight offside decision, Danny Ward away to Peterborough just one example.