We have to get with the times and allow refs to be mic’d up
HARD on the heels of French football broadcasting VAR audio and allowing their referees to conduct pitchside interviews, England goes live tomorrow evening with their own first step into a welcome new era.
As part of Sky Sports’ traditional Monday Night Football show, PGMOL chief Howard Webb is scheduled to appear in a half-hour pilot called ‘Match Officials: Mic’d Up’ to talk through conversations between officials and explain the reasons for a number of decisions that have attracted attention this season.
Providing his outing goes to plan, the idea is for similar audio to be released more regularly next term.
This is the kind of stuff that you’d expect smaller leagues to lead the way on, to gauge the temperature. Look at Australian football, for example. Their fly-on-the-wall A-League All Access series — complete with a full episode centred on our own Jason ‘Cumdog’ Cummings —- has gained a huge amount of traction over the past six months or so, taking viewers inside dressing-rooms and all the flare-ups, fall-outs and niggles that make the old game what it is.
That’s entertainment aimed at bringing in new audiences. It says something, though, that the big leagues are leading the way on opening up content from VAR in an attempt to let punters see things from the referee’s perspective and take a bit of the heat away from a confusing and much-misunderstood addition to the landscape.
Given the monstrous levels of distrust that now exist within Scottish football in the wake of a chaotic introduction period for video assistants, this is something the SFA and SPFL should be all over. Yet, the only notable public conversation so far has involved Sky Sports commentator Andy Walker revealing that his access to the audio feed at a match this season allowed him to hear one VAR official telling a referee to take ‘the easiest way out’ of a situation by giving an offside.
It’s just atrocious. Surely there must be talks going on behind the scenes to make audio available. Surely the introduction of a new central marketing hub for Scottish football will have the resources to come up with other novel ideas to harness and cash in on what remains a strong and vibrant culture here.
For those of us on the outside right now, though, silence reigns and it just feels like the same old story. That our game is miles behind the curve. Miles away from being a switched-on, inventive modern product. And miles away from being what it could — and should — be.