A-League’s video ref promises to speed up VAR decisions
Tom Smithies goes inside the A-League’s controversial VAR bunker as the man who operates it promises faster decisions from the $150,000 technology.
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THE man at the centre of the A-League’s VAR storm has promised that fans can expect quicker decisions as the new $150,000 technology beds down — but the priority will still be the right decisions.
After a series of game-changing moments in the opening round thrust the VAR into the spotlight, The Saturday Telegraph ventured in to the VAR HQ in Redfern to see the new offside technology in operation. It’s the same HawkEye system that has caused consternation in the EPL, with players ruled offside by centimetres.
VAR Kris Griffiths Jones officiates on the bulk of A-League games, and spent Thursday working through previously unseen video clips to try to speed up the time it takes for him to generate the 3D coloured lines across the screen that rule on offside.
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The decision to spend such a sum followed the outcry in last season’s grand final when Sydney FC had a goal ruled out for a marginal offside impossible to rule definitively on with the naked eye.
Though traditionalists have railed against the use of VAR, Griffiths Jones is trying to streamline it to gain the widest possible acceptance.
“The way I see it, the players train, referees train, so VARs should train,” said Griffiths Jones. “This season, especially with the new technology, we're making a real effort to come in to practice and train, using clips we haven't seen before so we can get better at spotting things, but also make the process faster.
“In what we call ‘on-field decisions’ — penalties, red cards etc — I think we can get a lot quicker. It's about identifying the incident, coming up with a decision and relaying that to the referee in a lot faster way.
“At the moment we're erring on the side of caution, to get it right, and we're probably giving ourselves too much time to go through it.”
What Griffiths Jones calls “the process” is the way he sits with a HawkEye operator to rule on super-tight offsides, like the disallowed “goal” Kosta Barbarouses scored for Sydney in Round 1.
First Griffiths Jones has to identify which players could be offside, and which defender might be playing them on. Then he has to scroll through somewhere between seven and 12 camera angles to find the best angle — not just of players, but of pitch markings and static points that HawkEye uses to generate the 3D model.
At that point a Hawkeye operative positions “crosshairs” on attacker and defender to Griffiths Jones’s approval, zooming in to locate the part of the body closest to the play, before the software then generates the crossfield lines which show if the attacker is offside or not.
The Daily Telegraph was invited to act as VAR using footage of Roy O’Donovan’s goal for Brisbane on Sunday — initially ruled as offside by the linesman but overturned by the VAR.
Even when you know the outcome, it’s an uncomfortable experience to feel the clock ticking as the vision zooms in, and the picture pixelates alarmingly. Finding the exact moment the ball is kicked, and locating the right spot on the players’ bodies is a challenge, and two-and-a-half minutes has gone by before it’s established that O’Donovan is onside. Add the 30 seconds it takes to relay that to the on-field referee, and the delay is considerable.
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Whether it’s worthwhile depends largely on your overall view on VAR — the flow of the game versus getting the right decision.
A grid of pre-drawn lines can be overlaid on the footage in some situations to save time as the VARs become more confident with the system.
“With offsides as we get better we can shave a little bit of time off, but there's still a process to go through,” Griffiths Jones said.
“When we get more confident we can use the grid, and that will shave half or three quarters of the time off.”