Why VAR is as much of an embarrassment as Donald Trump and Dominic Cummings - Chris Waters

DRS continues to have its ups and downs; so long as there are a finite number of reviews available to each team, the occasional howler will slip through the net, and it is mostly used to review 50-50 decisions and – infuriatingly – for tactical purposes.

But although I have never been a particular fan of it and think that the umpire’s word should be final, I suppose it works as well as any such system is likely to work, and through a process of trial and error it generally walks the fine line between getting things right and, at the same time, not undermining umpires’ authority to the extent that they are figures of fun.

VAR, however, is a different breed of cat.

Football’s DRS, if we can call it such, works about as well as a grandfather clock without a pendulum, or a gramophone player without a needle.

Time after time, week after week, the video assistant referee throws up more controversy than Donald Trump’s Twitter feed.

It has become, like Trump, Cummings and the whole damn lot of ’em, a total embarrassment.

Yet another example came at Selhurst Park on Saturday when Leeds United’s Patrick Bamford scored a perfectly good goal against Crystal Palace.

Only he did not according to the sages of Stockley Park, who ruled it out because Bamford’s arm was adjudged to have been offside in the act of pointing to where he wanted the ball to be played by a team-mate.

Every other part of Bamford’s body – head, torso, legs and feet – was onside. Thus Leeds were denied an equaliser at 1-1 in a match they lost 4-1.

The decision was heavily criticised.

Robbie Savage called it the worst in the history of football – perhaps momentarily forgetting such as Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’, or Harald Schumacher’s near-decapitation of Patrick Battiston in the 1982 World Cup semi-final, which elicited not so much as a free-kick.

Gary Lineker described the Bamford incident as ridiculous and said he loathed the way VAR is implemented. The Walkers Crisps man also ran a Twitter poll for Match of the Day which asked concerning VAR: Keep it or bin it?

“Bin it,” said 70 per cent of the 250,000-plus respondents. Presumably the other 30 per cent would have voted for Trump.

Technically, we are told, the VAR verdict was correct.

Yet again, former referees – minor celebrities these day, you will notice – said the sages of Stockley Park were simply doing their job.

Be that as it may. The old saying that “the law is an ass” is an old saying for a reason, and surely a little common sense is required.

Already this season we have seen goals chalked off because someone’s armpit is offside, or their shoulder is offside. What next? An eyebrow, perhaps, or a recalcitrant nasal hair?

Ideally, there would be no need for technology and decisions, right or wrong, would be accepted in sport as they always used to be.

The advent of too much money in sport, though, has put paid to that, and football, in particular, has long since operated in its own blinkered, avaricious world.

Football is not so much an entertainment business, indeed, as a business, a playground where the stakes are high and the consequences of on-field mistakes higher still.

The fans? Oh, they’re just the mugs who pay to go and watch – or not watch in these insufferable days.

So, what is the solution? I would say better and more consistent interpretation of technology, better communication with supporters, and just plain commonsense.

When it comes to offsides, I would actually go the other way and adopt the template of cricket’s no-ball rule, which gives the benefit of doubt to the bowler in that he must have at least a part of his back foot behind the line for the ball to be legitimate.

Although there are not the same clear-line decisions in football as there are in cricket, with its no-balls, run outs and stumpings, why not give the benefit of doubt to the striker, so that at least part of his body must be on-side for a goal to be scored?

That way, we would not have been looking at the position of Bamford’s leading arm but at the position of his feet; his back leg was actually well behind those of the two defenders between whom he found space to score the latest goal abolished from history.

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