Rising clamour for more use of technology ignores thorny issues
By Kevin Egan
In his Irish Times column this week, Darragh Ó Sé quite correctly pointed out that Dublin manager Ger Brennan had nothing to say on the topic of using technology more extensively to assist match officials when his team overcame Galway, in part because of John Maher being denied what looked like a stonewall penalty.
Last Sunday, all the talk was of the two contentious decisions – Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne’s foul on Joe O’Connor for the early Kerry penalty, and whether or not Ross McGarry’s effort crossed the line – as well as the one clearly incorrect call, which was not ruling out Seán O’Brien’s goal for a square ball infringement. Yet Niall Scully probably should have got a red card for his challenge on Mike Breen, but for whatever reason, that wasn’t part of the discussion.
This all follows Kerry benefitting from a few equally helpful decisions against Tyrone in the quarter-final, so when all that is added together, now there are suggestions of video reviews for key incidents in big games at Croke Park, as well as possible goal-line technology to determine if a ball has crossed the line or not for key scores. What we haven’t noticed is anyone presenting the case for the other side, so that’s what we’re going to do here and now.
With regard to goal-line technology, that would be used extremely infrequently. In fact instances of “did the ball cross the line or not” are incredibly rare in Gaelic games, so while it could be deployed, it would have a minimal effect on our games, so no problem there.
However the thorny topic of using video replays to make judgements on key scores is a completely different scenario. Firstly, what determines a key score? It’s easy to say that a penalty or a goal clearly passes that threshold, but a late point can determine the result of a game too, and actually putting down on paper where the line should be drawn is very challenging.
If a game is level in the last minute of stoppage time, the decision to award a free 40 metres out is a match-changing decision, but how do you write the rule to make something like that reviewable, but not a similar incident in the first minute of the game? One of Tyrone’s biggest grievances was the failure of referee Paddy Neilan to award a free to midfielder Conn Kilpatrick late in the game, but are we really going to review every decision, everywhere on the field?
Then take the Joe O’Connor/Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne incident. If Brendan Cawley deems that O’Connor charged, then there is no ‘penalty’ to review – and moreover, even after endless replays and different angles, it’s still very much open to interpretation.
And if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, is rugby a better game because of TMO reviews, that can rule out a try for a slightly forward pass five phases before the score? How many soccer fans do you know that think their game is better for the widespread use of VAR? And given that virtually all the big VAR calls in the World Cup have gone in favour of the ‘bigger’ country, has the introduction of VAR done anything to assuage conspiracy theories?
In an ideal world, referees would be flawless individuals who have eyes in the back of their heads, and who would never miss a thing that happens on a two and a half acre field of grass. In the real world, referees are just like players, who do their best every time they go out, and occasionally they make mistakes, due to suffering from a condition called humanity.
It would be possible to introduce more technology to reduce the number of mistakes, but that number would never be zero, and any decision to widen the remit of the technical assistants must be balanced up with the cost to our games as spectator sports.
If all of these things are properly teased out to allow for an informed decision, then regardless of what that decision might be, it would be easy to accept. But a knee-jerk response to one match, just because it involved the two highest profile teams in Gaelic football, is not the way to go.