Could cricket style 'challengers' be introduced to football?

[tangerinedream]

So you're faced with a choice, either stick with what we've got now, or try something new to solve the problem

What we have now is only a problem because the 'your on sky sports!' phone in culture seeks to make controversy as they make capital from instigating 'debate' out of mistakes. Same for the newspapers and radio phone ins. Refs are no worse and are probably objectively slightly better as they are fitter and better trained now.

I understand your point, but a lot of inovations have been trialled. Just because they havn't been tried in the public eye at top level doesn't mean experiment doesn't happen.

Also, remember, the game is global and effectively changing the law of football to allow challenges etc would have a much bigger impact than in say, cricket which only has 9/10 (depends how you see Zim) international test playing nations, whereas football has hundreds and hundreds and many of them are essentially skint. It's not just about Hackney Marshes, it's also about the Congo and Surinam and the Cook Islands and so and so on.

We do use technology in many, many ways in the game, I just personally do not see bad refereeing decisions as a problem particular to this era or something we should attempt to wipe out. They are part of the game to me. Maybe I'm a luddite, maybe I'm a realist. I dunno.

 

[tangerinedream]

As addendum to above point re trials of technology out of public eye...

Goal-line technology has been tested in Peru, where the World under-17 championship has been played. FIFA will test it further at the World Club Championship in Japan in December.

 

[Jazzz]

And can you imagine the sort of bedlam that would reign on the terraces during those three minutes?

No-one's bitten to my point yet so here goes. The game currently stops for a whole fifteen minutes, to let the teams have a breather and swap ends, and to my knowledge no-one goes berserk, bedlam doesn't break out, etc etc. in fact spectators take the chance to grap a pie and take a piss

 

[huxley71]

No, you'd either have someone up in a booth who is able to replay it on a screen in front of them or a booth where the referee would go to make the decision.*</QUOTE>

So, what about games that don't have TV coverage, or goal-line technology? Again, do we not care about them?

And, on a different point, even in the Premier League/Sky televised games (which, incidentally, seem to be the ones that people in favour of this technology only care about) I hate the idea of the armchair fan being aware of a process that the fan on the terraces (as if...) is completely oblivious to.

 

[huxley71]

I just can't see any good argument for allowing things like this to happen

Because it's hillarious.

Have you ever celebrated a goal that should have been disallowed? It's fantastic! Mainly because the opposition fans are even more pissed off than if you'd scored a bicycle kick from outside the box.

And of course I hate it when we concede one, but... it's only a game of football. And besides, you get the chance to shout at the ref a bit.

If you want a sport with perfect decisions, then why not try snooker or bowls? (I've nothing against either)

 

[stupid kid]

Because it's hillarious.

 

[stupid kid]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/sep/23/arsenal.premierleague2

Wenger is for goalline technology, and Platini is against it, or perhaps just against Wenger?

 

[Ride]

I've added a poll, this could get interesting

The other option we could have is some kind of sensors on the goal (and one in the ball) which would be able to tell if the ball had crossed the line, I read about them somewhere and they really did sound like the most reliable and less time intensive option but I'd be against them myself as currently they would be to expensive too implement in the lower leagues

Here's a diagram of how it would work -

 

[tangerinedream]

Because it's hillarious.

Have you ever celebrated a goal that should have been disallowed? It's fantastic! Mainly because the opposition fans are even more pissed off than if you'd scored a bicycle kick from outside the box.

And of course I hate it when we concede one, but... it's only a game of football. And besides, you get the chance to shout at the ref a bit.

If you want a sport with perfect decisions, then why not try snooker or bowls? (I've nothing against either)

So, what about games that don't have TV coverage, or goal-line technology? Again, do we not care about them?

And, on a different point, even in the Premier League/Sky televised games (which, incidentally, seem to be the ones that people in favour of this technology only care about) I hate the idea of the armchair fan being aware of a process that the fan on the terraces (as if...) is completely oblivious to.

Two more very good posts I agree entirely with.

 

[Jazzz]

Because it's hillarious.

Have you ever celebrated a goal that should have been disallowed? It's fantastic! Mainly because the opposition fans are even more pissed off than if you'd scored a bicycle kick from outside the box.

So Maradona's 'Hand of God' goal in 1986 should have stood because of our discomfort?

Curious.

 

[editor]

Well in an extreme case you might have more. But basically you have two challenges for each team, that's only exceeded if the decisions are overturned. You have a 1 minute maximum time for the video ref to decide if he's sure a decision was wrong. Most of the time he won't need anything like that (usually it's easy to form a conclusion based on the first replay) 20-30 seconds will be quite enough.

Utter rubbish. They're still arguing over the Engand world cup goal in 1966, for fuck's sake.

 

[tangerinedream]

Utter rubbish. They're still arguing over the Engand world cup goal in 1966, for fuck's sake.

Which one could argue, is the perfect reason to allow the 'hand of god' to stand...

 

[Jazzz]

Utter rubbish. They're still arguing over the Engand world cup goal in 1966, for fuck's sake.

The fact that one badly-placed camera failed to resolve one famous issue on one occasion hardly means that the vast majority of contentions are not now easily decided with replay (and of course, goal-line cameras).

 

[tangerinedream]

The fact that one badly-placed camera failed to resolve one famous issue on one occasion hardly means that the vast majority of contentions are not now easily decided with replay (and of course, goal-line cameras).

The contentions are part and parcel of the game though. It's interesting when you look at football in a non premier league setting, the debate on message boards and amongst fans is rarely about this decision or that decision, whereas you can't turn on 606 without some anodyne twat going on about an offside from two weeks ago.

It's because these fans are told that these decisions are important, whereas yer average non/lower-league fan accepts 99% of decisions as 'one of those things' and concentrates on the team, the manager, the board, the volume of the fans, the facilities at the ground or whatever else.

I reckon that's true when I think about it. We might gripe about 'this ref' but rarely does an individual decision get such outrage as we aren't treated to endless replays and analysis. It takes a proper howler for refs to get more than a passing mention on the boards I look at - (Blackpool ones mainly and a few non-league ones locally) and when they do come up, it's often in conjuction with an international or premiership/european game on telly, where the agenda for discussion is set by outside forces.

 

[editor]

The fact that one badly-placed camera failed to resolve one famous issue on one occasion hardly means that the vast majority of contentions are not now easily decided with replay (and of course, goal-line cameras).

Who's going to play for the purchase, maintenance, training and staffing of all this expensive gear, Jazzz?

Oh, don't tell me - the fans!

 

[tangerinedream]

In fact, to support my assertation that fans outside the top tier of media saturated clubs don't care that much about 'contentious' decisions by and large I checked the cod-army and avftt message boards (Fleetwood Town and Blackpool FC unofficial sites)

Both are pretty busy sites and yet no threads about referees appeared on the first two pages of either (approx 20 threads to page.) So, in 80+ threads, no-one seemed bothered to raise the apparantly immensely important spectre of refs...

Now to check some premier league boards to see if they are all whinging about refs...

 

[Jazzz]

We might gripe about 'this ref' but rarely does an individual decision get such outrage as we aren't treated to endless replays and analysis. It takes a proper howler for refs to get more than a passing mention

I think this is it though - the difference with non-league football is not that the decisions are any less contentious per se but that we are literally in very poor position to question the referee. If I watch a game from the stands, I'm surprised if I could name two players involved in an incident that flashed by quickly, and the thought of attempting to referee a whole game from sucha vantage point - well it doesn't bear thinking about. But with television replays, well we can all know better.

And editor much as we might bemoan the bells and whistles of modern sport coverage and hark back to a more romantic age of one camera in the middle of the pitch - well it isn't going to happen and do we actually want that?

 

[tangerinedream]

I think this is it though - the difference with non-league football is not that the decisions are any less contentious per se but that we are literally in very poor position to question the referee. If I watch a game from the stands, I'm surprised if I could name two players involved in an incident that flashed by quickly, and the thought of attempting to referee a whole game from sucha vantage point - well it doesn't bear thinking about. But with television replays, well we can all know better.

And editor much as we might bemoan the bells and whistles of modern sport coverage and hark back to a more romantic age of one camera in the middle of the pitch - well it isn't going to happen and do we actually want that?

You miss my point slightly possibly? I think fans that actually attend the game aren't that bothered - Possibly cos shouting at the ref is part of the ritual, whereas those who don't (Premier clubs by their nature attract armchair fans in far bigger numbers) are more bothered, not simply because they see more replays but because they are told to be bothered about it.

 

[huxley71]

So Maradona's 'Hand of God' goal in 1986 should have stood because of our discomfort?

Curious.

No. It should have stood because the ref didn’t see it.

I was fucking livid (as a 15-year-old) when that happened. But have somehow managed to get over it in the intervening couple of decades. As I’m sure most Spanish fans have since their perfectly legitimate goal against us was ruled out for off-side at Wembley in 1996.

 

[Jazzz]

okay, well I'll wrap up my feelings. We can have a ref that sees pretty much everything - we should use him. And while referees just have a pair of eyes they will miss things, and where the stakes are high as they are in the top flight, people will take advantage of that by cheating. But if we have better decisions, they'll stop bothering - what's the point? They'll just be rewarded with yellow cards. This will just make it a better game. We don't actually need the howlers, the abuse of the referee, the diving, dangerous fouls, and the pressure applied by players and managers to bully the refs. The game will be better without all of those. Once we introduce video refereeing for top-level football, we will wonder how we managed without it.

 

[tangerinedream]

Why are the stakes higher in top flight Jazz?

 

[Jazzz]

There's more money involved

 

[huxley71]

There's more money involved

We have a winner.

 

[tangerinedream]

We have a winner.