Football 2010-2011

[Benj]

the results were a delay to the playing of the game.

[eFestivals]

and considering how close it was probably the result but lets not worry about the addition of an extra 1% playing time (that actually adds excitement in the case of cricket) get in the way of that.

cricket is so slow anyway that any delay like that is a minor factor. The same doesn't apply with footie.

[ampersand]

cricket is so slow anyway that any delay like that is a minor factor. The same doesn't apply with footie.

[eFestivals]

neil, about half the stadium go for a pie five minutes before the first half has even concluded. and lots stroll in five minutes after kick off cos they're too busy finishing their pints.

you might care about a 2/10/20 second delay, but the majority wouldn't really care. nor would the players to get a wee breather and fill up the stamina bar that little bit.

for the games where such a system would be used the stadium audience is generally a tiny proportion of the whole audience - and more importantly (from some angles), a small proportion of the money.

You say that the majority wouldn't care, but that's not been FIFA's conclusion.

Or to put it another way: if it ain't broke don't fix it.

After all, there's not a huge demand for any sort of decision review system to be put in place from any angle of the game, aside from goal-line technology (which is the one thing where there's always a clear-cut decision, and the game would stop as a result).

Sure, there's a big outcry for the very few instances where some feel particularly hard-done-by such as the France/Ireland thing, but instances such as those are few and far between, and the benefit of getting the right decision for those has to be weighed against all of the other far-less-important times such a system would be used and the negative impact it would have along with it, as well as a consideration of the times it couldn't correct a bad decision (such as in the CC final) or when there's no clear-cut ruling that can be made (such as with the Rooney elbow).

It's nowhere near as black and white or as simple as worm is presenting it. As I said from the off, any such system has negative impacts as well as positive, and ignoring the impact of those as worm has done here makes just about all of his words on this subject worthless.

[ampersand]

neil, i agree that it shouldn't be brought in. but your extra delay angle is just ridiculous as there's enough delays as it is to render it irrelevant.

and regarding your point that the tv audience is the much bigger one, the superbowl doesn't tend to suffer from constant ad breaks or going back to the studio. a small delay for a decision isn't going to make a huge impact on the handful of guys in a living room drinking beer. if it resulted in ad breaks while the decision was made, i'd agree. but it would just result in action replays and tyler or whoever commenting on it.

Edited March 3, 2011 by ampersand

[eFestivals]

you keep saying it but it will still be bollocks. there's lots of small stoppages in football. another small stoppage isn't going to make a difference.

watch a game and take a note of how long a ball is out of play when a ref blows for a penalty and the resulting penalty is staken. or from when a player makes a foul, is booked and then the resulting free kick is taken. you may surprise yourself!

A game of cricket is many hours long, even for 20-20 - longer than football. So within those many hours a minute's delay is a much tinier proportion of the whole event than it would be with football.

It's also the case that decisions in cricket are cut and dried, 100% clear in just about everything - someone is either out, or they're not, there's no dispute about that with clear evidence (such as from cameras).

The same is not true for football, where a tackle can be considered by some to be fair, by others a foul but minor, by others a yellow, and by others a red (OK, I know I've stretched that a little, but I'm trying to make the point clear).

So there is no 100% certain decision that can be made for things like that, there is only an opinion. And by having two (at least) different people - the ref on the field and the reviewer - handing down those decisions the consistency of rulings within a game is lost, because it will never be the case that those opinions will match.

People complain now that a ref is slack or overly harsh - but at least you know that's how that ref is, and the game can be played by the players within how that ref works. Once you have two opinions that's out the window, no one really knows where they stand in regard to any decisions outside of the ones that are definitive - the ball crossing any of the lines of the field of play, or offside.

But with offside there can (in half the cases) be no redress even if a decision is reviewed and over-turned - there is no way to give Brum their advantage back, and a penalty can't be awarded because the players have played to the flag.

Edited March 3, 2011 by eFestivals

[ampersand]

there was no need for that long post neil, you're preaching to the converted. just one aspect of your arguement is nonsense for me. say the review system was flawless (which it's not), if you sat and timed the delays for any calls it would be used for, you'd realise that it wouldn't make a significant difference. you'd barely notice. i did this last night.

[eFestivals]

neil, i agree that it shouldn't be brought in. but your extra delay angle is just ridiculous as there's enough delays as it is to render it irrelevant.

It might be minor, but it still impacts on the spectacle that people have come to see. That alters their enjoyment of what they've come to see. Claiming other than that is what's ridiculous here.

and regarding your point that the tv audience is the much bigger one, the superbowl doesn't tend to suffer from constant ad breaks or going back to the studio. a small delay for a decision isn't going to make a huge impact on the handful of guys in a living room drinking beer. if it resulted in ad breaks while the decision was made, i'd agree. but it would just result in action replays and tyler or whoever commenting on it.

The superbowl does suffer from such things - it's a part of why yank football has not taken off around the world as football has done, despite much bigger sums and much bigger efforts having been ploughed into it to try and make it a world-wide success than with football.

Edited March 3, 2011 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

there was no need for that long post neil, you're preaching to the converted. just one aspect of your arguement is nonsense for me. say the review system was flawless (which it's not), if you sat and timed the delays for any calls it would be used for, you'd realise that it wouldn't make a significant difference. you'd barely notice. i did this last night.

your imaginings are probably not how it would work in practice.

Such things have been tried in test games by FIFA, and found to work poorly.

[Benj]

A game of cricket is many hours long, even for 20-20 - longer than football. So within those many hours a minute's delay is a much tinier proportion of the whole event than it would be with football.

It's also the case that decisions in cricket are cut and dried, 100% clear in just about everything - someone is either out, or they're not, there's no dispute about that with clear evidence (such as from cameras).

The same is not true for football, where a tackle can be considered by some to be fair, by others a foul but minor, by others a yellow, and by others a red (OK, I know I've stretched that a little, but I'm trying to make the point clear).

So there is no 100% certain decision that can be made for things like that, there is only an opinion. And by having two (at least) different people - the ref on the field and the reviewer - handing down those decisions the consistency of rulings within a game is lost, because it will never be the case that those opinions will match.

People complain now that a ref is slack or overly harsh - but at least you know that's how that ref is, and the game can be played by the players within how that ref works. Once you have two opinions that's out the window, no one really knows where they stand in regard to any decisions outside of the ones that are definitive - the ball crossing any of the lines of the field of play, or offside.

But with offside there can (in half the cases) be no redress even if a decision is reviewed and over-turned - there is no way to give Brum their advantage back, and a penalty can't be awarded because the players have played to the flag.

[Benj]

It might be minor, but it still impacts on the spectacle that people have come to see. That alters their enjoyment of what they've come to see. Claiming other than that is what's ridiculous here.

The superbowl does suffer from such things - it's a part of why yank football has not taken off around the world as football has done, despite much bigger sums and much bigger efforts having been ploughed into it to try and make it a world-wide success than with football.

Edited March 3, 2011 by Benj

[ampersand]

It might be minor, but it still impacts on the spectacle that people have come to see. That alters their enjoyment of what they've come to see. Claiming other than that is what's ridiculous here.

[ampersand]

your imaginings are probably not how it would work in practice.

Such things have been tried in test games by FIFA, and found to work poorly.

[Benj]

it impacts about as much as a pigeon flying onto the pitch at wembley. the timing would do nothing to affect the people who watch. and people that decided to leave based on that probably aren't that important anyway and are the types who claim to support man utd but only watch 2 games a season.

and 'come to see'? so we're back now talking about the people in the stadium who happily miss 10 minutes of a game for pies and pints?

[ampersand]

and what impacts it more, 2-3 minutes of reviews out of 116 minutes, or one handball that ends 2 years worth of matches?

In effect everyone who watched one of the ROI's matches may well have not bothered for the sake of that one incident

[Benj]

source? if it has been tried and tested, i'd hazard a guess that it's not the timings that's caused it to fail. it's the other points that have been put across.

[worm]

It's an extra delay. Delays are not what people go to see.

[worm]

Currently a referee has no immediate oversight of their decisions, so they approach their decisions in a particular way. They can have confidence that their decisions are not about to be immediately called into question in a way that changes anything about that decision.

[ampersand]

Pathetic argument.

[worm]

The reason they wont do it is the cost, it would cost an absolute bomb to implement it. Plus it would also massively highlight the horrific (/ace) cheating that takes place, which they wouldn't want to do for the image of the sport

Edited March 3, 2011 by worm

[worm]

kinda reminds me of the 'people only go to see their team win' stance.

people go for entertainment. 2 minutes of delay isn't going to have them staying away when they're still getting the same 90 they always have.

[The Nal]

Carrick signed a new contract.

Overcome with joy.

[modey]

Carrick signed a new contract.

Overcome with joy.

[eFestivals]

If it wasn't for the delays, would you support a review system then?

it depends what you're meaning by a review system.

There's no review system that can be devised that can satisfactorily deal with the Brum 'offside' incident in the CC final, for example. The only way something could work was if players were told to ignore the decisions of refs and linesmen and keep on playing - at which point the whole game becomes an unmanageable farce.

So any review system would have to be limited in its scope by that fact - at which point, for many incidents, you might as well not bother at all.

I've little problem with goal-line technology, because that's a cut & dried thing, where if a goal is scored the play stops anyway, and everything can carry on in the exact same manner as if the goal was spotted by the ref or linesman.

I've little problem with reviews after matches for 'exceptional' incidents - such as the Rooney elbow. I'm not sure that the right way of handling these exists currently where the ref has to say it was an unseen incident - but I do understand exactly why they've taken that view of it, for the consistency that comes from the ref.

I've not even got too much of a problem for reviews for diving, in theory at least. The difficulty there comes from deciding what is actually a dive - the Eduardo thing is a great example for that, because although it looks like a dive there's nothing that can prove for sure that it was. Even if it can proved that there's been no contact that still doesn't prove a dive, because it can be something that was done to avoid a collision.

Outside of that, it ends up changing what happens on the field, and gives no consistency to the play on the field - you have 'bad' sections of play (which can be said to be bits of play that shouldn't have happened) between a decision and a review which over-turns it. To my mind, things work better if fully consistent, even if that consistency is at the expense of the occasional wrong decision (and they are only occasional wrong decisions, whatever some people might like to think with their blinkers on).

The only reason there's a perception of refs getting more wrong nowadays is because we're all now able to have endless reviews ourselves of every incident, because of so many games being filmed and often with quite a number of cameras.

Oh and NFL is amazingly popular globally considering it in not played at any significant level in any nation bar the US and Canada.

It's failing to gain greater popularity to much of an extent, despite the big efforts and money that have been used to try to do that. The same is not true for football.

[eFestivals]

source? if it has been tried and tested, i'd hazard a guess that it's not the timings that's caused it to fail. it's the other points that have been put across.

the time taken for reviews - in whichever way a review system might operate - is a part of the reasons for the rejections. It changes the game, and football's administrators (in consultation with fans) don't see the benefits of greater accuracy of rulings as being worth the change to the game.