With the football World Cup now in full swing, refereeing decisions are back in the headlines.
Theoretically, the advent of the Video Assistant Referee, or VAR, system means that there should be less argument over the decisions of referees, be they right or wrong; indeed, VAR is also supposed to see some things that the on-field referee misses and bring them to his attention. In the first few games of the competition this seemed to work quite well, with offsides being adjudicated and penalties being awarded which otherwise would not have been, but last night was a different matter entirely.
For England's match against Tunisia, it appeared that the VAR was only working part-time. The assistant referees appeared to be flagging for tight offside decisions which it had previously been said that they should leave to the VAR, while the VAR seemed to be only partially sighted when he did intervene. After a VAR review confirmed that Kyle Walker's swinging arm had made contact with a Tunisian, who promptly fell on the floor as though pole-axed, and awarded the African side a penalty, far more deliberate and blatant acts against England were totally ignored.
While the penalty awarded against England could be the subject of dispute, Captain Harry Kane was the victim of the most obvious foul play on at least two occasions, being grabbed and wrestled to the ground by Tunisian defenders who clearly had eyes only for him. In the penalty area and paying no attention to the ball, the Tunisians seemingly had only one aim, that being to stop Kane any way that they could. The Colombian referee either didn't see the incidents or chose to ignore them, while the VAR sitting in front of numerous screens in Moscow saw nothing which required him to raise concerns. WHY ?
Nothing could have been more clear and yet the system failed completely. Thank heavens that Captain Kane eventually took the result of the match out of the hands of these incompetent officials.
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