Referees love VAR as it saves potentially career-ending mistakes
Fans, coaches and players may be frustrated with new video technology in football, but officials are full of praise for VAR for helping prevent career-ending mistakes.
A-League
Don't miss out on the headlines from A-League. Followed categories will be added to My News.
OPPONENTS of VAR might want to look away now — the man responsible for introducing it to world football believes it could take us a decade to fully understand it.
As debate continues to rage over the A-League’s use of HawkEye technology to rule on offsides down to the millimetre, the boss of the International Football Association Board has declared that referees love the VAR system as it can rescue career-ending mistakes.
Stream every game of The 2019/20 Hyundai A-League season — and all the VAR reviews — LIVE & On-Demand with KAYO SPORTS. Get your 14 day free trial & start streaming instantly >
IFAB is the body that governs changes to the rules of football, and Lukas Brud — its general secretary — has overseen the rollout of VAR across the world, with the A-League one of its earliest trials.
Though IFAB has told some leagues that it will review the details of VAR’s implementation early next year, it has emerged that Brud made clear it remains a long-term project, in comments to a study of the video refereeing system published recently.
“The VAR concept is still at the beginning,” he told the VAR From Perfect project. “We talked to other sports and everyone told us this is a 10-year project until people really understand how it works.”
“Referees report back to us that this is something they have always wanted, for various reasons.
“Every single referee has said to us, ‘For us, it’s great. We don’t have to be afraid of killing our careers.’
“They will have someone to fall back on and they love it.”
Much of the controversy this season has stemmed from the time taken to review decisions, in particular narrow offsides using the $150,000 HawkEye system that the English Premier League has used this season — with equal levels of consternation.
The lines drawn along the screen to show the positions of attacker and defender — or in the case of Roy O’Donovan scoring for Brisbane on Sunday, two attackers — are calculated by a HawkEye engineer using positional markers such as the goal frame, pitch markings etc.
Overseen by the VAR — in most cases former referee Kris Griffiths Jones — the technician selects a point on the body of each player closest to the goal (in the case of the attacker) and furthest from it (for the defender).
But not all camera angles can be used as the frame has to have sufficient markers in it to be able to calculate in a 3D sense the exact position of each player.
MORE NEWS
A-League’s opening round blighted by joy-killing VAR decisions
Gary Lineker’s VAR warning rings true in A-League opener
A-League defends revamped VAR despite several Round 1 delays
Once the HawkEye software creates horizontal lines along the pitch to show that position, and vertical lines, the image has to be double checked by the VAR before he decides whether the attacker is actually offside.
A-League officials believe there has been an unnatural number of microscopic and game-changing offside calls in the opening round, sparking the current uproar.
A far simpler visual grid will also be used early in the process by the VAR to each a far quicker decision in more obvious cases.