IT'S NOT WORKING

Video refs are mistrusted because the application of science has been flawed

We are approaching the 20th anniversary of one of the great television moments.

The day when my old friend Chris Sutton looked into the camera after Celtic had beaten Kilmarnock at Rugby Park with four unanswered goals – but lost the league title to Rangers after they had taken six off Dunfermline at Ibrox.

Sutty summed up the margin of Rangers’ victory by saying of their opponents: “We knew they’d lie down and they have done.”

The aftermath of that candid summar y of events was predictably volcanic.

Chris copped a five-match ban from the SFA.

Dunfermline considered legal act ion, claiming they had sufficient grounds to allege defamation of character.

And Sutton brought the mat t e r to a ty pically pugnacious conclusion by publicly stating he would never apologise to then Dunfermline manager Jimmy Calderwood for what he had said.

I only recall the incident, which took place on May 25 2003, to mind because Chris’ name was put forward, along with his own, by Ally McCoist the other day as being the kind of ex-pros who could be drafted in to lend a hand with the Video Assistant Referee process which has gone horribly, and some would say irretrievably, wrong.

Ally might have been mischievous – but his point is a serious one.

Solid pros with illustrious careers behind them would undoubted ly k now the difference between a dodgy, as opposed to a legitimate, penalty.

They would instinctively tell whether or not any handball offence was understandable and not laughable.

A yellow card could be told from a red one by virtue of years’ worth of experience defining one from the other.

But here’s the thing.

If Sutty adjudicated in favour of a penalty against Rangers would you need any diagrams drawn to illustrate what the response might be?

Similarly, Coisty advising that a goal scored by Celtic should be overturned would be met with fury and accompanied by suggestions of institutionalised bias. There would be no one l istening if you said that the decisions were made in good faith.

We’re in enough trouble with VAR, Ally, without voluntarily inviting any more problems than we already have in front of us, thanks all the same. Close the door on your way out.

In theory, the public at large are being asked to trust the technology.

In practice, VAR has been found guilty of being wonky in the extreme and we still have three Old Firm games of crucial importance to be played in a shot space of time before the season ends.

God help us all.

Trust the technology?

The Celtic and Rangers fans wouldn’t trust VAR if Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, was appointed to sit in charge of the machinery at Clydesdale House on April 8, the date of the first of the traumatic trio of derby games.

Half of James Tavernier’s 98 goals for Rangers have come from penalties.

A third of the 21 goals lost by Celtic so far this season have been as the result of penalties awarded against them.

People genuinely bel ieve there are forces at work that explain both of those statistics.

And VAR makes them even more suspicious. It sounds comical but that’s the reality of the situation.

As I suspected all along, VAR is in the wrong country.

Scotland can’t be doing with calibrated lines, especially if the operatives can’t calibrate the lines properly.

Managers are being driven to distraction because games that could have fa r- reaching consequences, like relegation leading to redundancies and financial difficulty, are being determined by verdicts that would be described by the judicial system as unsafe.

It’s not enough to say the world’s gone mad.

The game’s being ruined by inefficiency and the customer base is concerned and growing increasingly disillusioned.

Or, as the caller said on air the other night: “Crawford Al lan has got to walk.”

Crawford is the SFA’s man in charge of referees and that means, in the eyes of the fans, it’s all his fault. A sweeping general isation but sti ll a common response.

We are not experiencing the predicted “teething problems”. We need the full root-canal treatment.

The application of the science has been seriously flawed.

The naked eye of the match officials has also, too often, been found unreliable. Players in England’s top flight have now been instructed to tone down their celebrations when a goal is scored because their concentration levels could be affected in the event of the goal subsequently being ruled out.

Good luck with that at Celtic Park on April 8. The best of luck with everything that day because public conf idence in match officials and the VAR operatives is at an all-time low. We knew they’d muck it up and they have done, as you might say.

It’s not teethin problem g need s .. we the full root-canal treatm ent