‘A goal isn’t a goal’: Video refereeing has sucked the joy from sport

The NRL’s longest-serving coach, Wayne Bennett, is a man of few words. But the words he grudgingly parts with are always worth hearing.

Earlier this month, after Bennett’s Dolphins exited the finals race, the laconic super coach delivered an uncharacteristically lengthy speech about the NRL’s video refereeing system, the Bunker.

Trai Fuller in full flight during the match that prompted Wayne Bennett’s comments about video technology.Credit: Getty Images

Bennett’s argument was simple. Video referees are human beings. They make mistakes, just like the referee on the field. The only difference is that the mistakes of the video refs take much, much longer to be perpetrated.

How do we fix this? Bennett’s answer was concise. “Get rid of it,” he said.

In four crisp words, Bennett spoke for multitudes of sports fans. Get rid of it. Lose it. Deep-six it. Video review technology is changing the character of the sports we love. Its overuse has become a form of madness.

Everyone seems to know this except the people who run sport. According to them, the real act of madness would be to have this technology at our disposal without using it an awful lot.

NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo said as much last week, as he swiftly moved to assure the public that Bennett’s eloquent appeal to common sense was in no danger of being heeded. “I think it’s ridiculous,” Abdo said, “to consider a sport not using technology to make decisions.”

It was bold of Abdo to portray himself as a foe of the ridiculous. For Bennett’s whole point was that the situation is ridiculous already. It’s ridiculous right now.

In one recent match, play stopped for several minutes while the Bunker pondered the staggeringly insignificant question of whether the ball, after being kicked into the air, had illegally brushed the pinkie of an attacking player on the way down.

The tape was played over and over, as if it were the Zapruder film. Maybe, if you rewatched it often enough, evidence of the microscopic infraction would reveal itself.

After all, the technology to do this exists. Therefore it must be used.

Let’s get David Caruso on standby at games too.

If that’s the argument, why not send a CSI team onto the paddock to dust the ball for prints? If utter certainty is the goal, let’s get David Caruso out there to do some DNA swabs.

Fanaticism, said George Santayana, consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. Somehow Santayana came up with this line without ever seeing a Bunker referee in action. In their quest to enforce the rules with subatomic precision, the video refs seem to forget what the rules are for.

Surely they exist so that play can generally be got on with. If a player breaks them in a way that’s visible to the naked eye, in real time, that’s an offence. Otherwise, play on.

Video refereeing puts the cart before the horse. These days, play is constantly being suspended so that enforcement of the rules can be got on with.

Life is messy. Sport isn’t. Or anyway it shouldn’t be.

Why do we watch sport in the first place? Because it’s a heightened version of life. In sport, as in life, there are goals, striving, disappointment, ecstasy. But in sport, the lulls and complications are edited out. Life is messy. Sport isn’t. Or anyway it shouldn’t be.

Take soccer. The object of the game is beautifully simple. Get the ball into the opposition’s net. This is very hard to do. So when your team finally does it, it’s time to go unequivocally off your nut.

But wait! Not so fast. Put your frenzied celebrations on ice. Some unseen bureaucrat is speaking into the referee’s earpiece. It seems the goal you’ve so rashly allowed yourself to feel happy about may not be a goal after all.

Now the referee is walking towards the sideline. There’s an alfresco TV set over there. The referee starts watching replays of the goal on it. Many, many replays.

The players stand around on the field, talking among themselves while 40,000 fans in the stadium twiddle their thumbs. They’d thought they were there to see a soccer match. Instead, they’re looking at a guy in a bright yellow shirt watching a very small TV.

Time passes. Glaciers melt. Eventually, the referee either awards the goal or erases it from history.

Either way, the moment of jouissance has been lost. One of life’s most straightforwardly glorious experiences – the experience of seeing your team bang one into the onion bag – has been fundamentally altered. A goal isn’t a goal any more. It’s something that may or may not become a goal in about four minutes’ time.

Next time around, you won’t make the mistake of celebrating so much, or at all. Sport is becoming more and more like real life, and not in a good way.

Things don’t have to be like this. If we’re smart enough to invent the technology, we’re also smart enough to decide whether it’s working for us. If it isn’t, we have the power to get rid of it. We can always bring it back, if we find that we miss it. I don’t think we will.