You think you’ve got your head round refs and video re-runs and handballs and all the rest of it, then Willie Collum’s VAR Review turns up to plunge you right down the rabbithole.
Honestly, even a day or so after watching his look-back on September’s points of contention, it’s hard not to feel dizzy and discombobulated. At the end of the broadcast, it was impossible not to sit with the thousand-yard stare on, trying to put together all of the pieces of what you’d just witnessed.
Maybe it just came at the end of a long week. Maybe it was just a case of one snifter of apple brandy too many. Maybe it’s just what you deserve for sitting on a Friday night like a proper anorak, still watching this show when most other folk seem to be living their lives.
Collum’s talk-in does remain worth a visit. It can be educational. Yes, there’s a bit of positive PR for the Scottish FA’s refereeing department in there, but it still feels like an honest attempt at trying to explain why contentious decisions were given in big matches, right or wrong.
However, Friday’s affair frazzled the brain. Or it frazzled what’s left of this one, at least. It was too much to digest in one sitting.
Lawrence Shankland wears a sheepish look as he celebrates his controversial Ibrox opener
Willie Collum’s explanation of the incident only managed to muddy the picture even further
Shankland slots home but admitted afterwards he expected it to be ruled out on review
It just left you with the feeling that Collum and the SFA, in an attempt to stay onside with ‘stakeholders’ — and delivering a degree of ‘recalibration’ with regard to guidance on how officials should apply the laws, as he put it — are digging a hole for themselves over handball incidents that might just end up swallowing them completely.
Collum was clear at the start of the season that handballs — penalty-related incidents, in particular — were going to be interpreted differently. It was going to be about more than just whether or not the ball struck a player’s hand.
Other stuff was going to be at play. Body shape. Proximity. Deflections. It sounded fair and promising.
VAR hit crisis point in Scotland last term. He had to do something — and talking to players, managers and others inside the tent about what they felt fitted into the ‘spirit of the game’, if that’s the right terminology, felt like a sensible approach.
The worry, though, is that it has gone too far. That too many grey areas have crept in that no one seems to be able to find their way through. That players, managers, fans and even some officials themselves are so mixed-up by it all that they don’t really seem to know where they stand any longer.
Take the first incident shown on the VAR Review, the late penalty given to Celtic at Kilmarnock last month when a James Forrest shot ricocheted off Robbie Deas and struck home defender Lewis Mayo’s raised arm.
Celtic were awarded a late penalty against Kilmarnock when the ball struck Lewis Mayo’s arm
Collum admits it is a penalty under the Laws of the Game. However, he says the ‘feeling’ among stakeholders that it shouldn’t be given as a spot-kick — and that he doesn’t want to see any similar incidents in future given as one.
It kind of backed up Killie manager Stuart Kettlewell’s agonised reaction post-match, stating that he’d been informed by the SFA in pre-season that close-range deflections would not be punished, no matter where a player’s arm was positioned. It also begged the question why referee John Beaton clearly hadn’t got that message.
The problem is, as Collum pointed out, it’s not that straightforward. ‘Impact and consequences’ come into the mix as a kind of caveat, he stated. If the ball was going into the goal, for example, things would be different.
In other words, the same infringement at the edge of the box should go unpunished, but, if you’re in the six-yard box, there’s a fair chance the ref is giving a penalty and no one can do anything about it.
Sadly, this whole thing just feels like a recipe for ongoing, unresolvable trouble. It’s easy to see why Collum wanted the support of the footballing community in reviewing his guidance to officials, but, right now, you sense it might be easier going back to the way it used to be — and deciding whether it was deliberate or whether the hand was not in a position that fits into normal body mechanics.
Killie boss Stuart Kettlewell admitted he was baffled by the decision which cost his team dear
See, it’s not just exasperated managers who seem to be losing a handle on what is a punishable handball and what isn’t. It’s everyone.
The piece de resistance on Collum’s show the other night was the goal given to Hearts at Ibrox after Lawrence Shankland had very clearly taken the ball on his arm in the centre of the field before knocking it forward to Claudio Braga and then finishing after moving onto a return pass.
Few folk inside the ground that day could figure it out. Even Shankland himself admitted afterwards that he was kind of hoping Hearts wouldn’t go on to score because he knew the ball had struck his arm. His muted celebrations after hitting the net told their own story.
Yet, you watch the VAR footage and listen to the audio and it’s impossible to figure out what is going on. Referee Steven McLean is of the view that his arm was not in an unnatural position. Well, it was, and he was looking straight at it, but that’s his opinion, formed in a split-second.
It’s the position taken by VAR Greg Aitken that’s even more incomprehensible. He checks the incident and allows the goal to stand because he saw the ball striking Shankland’s arm as ‘completely accidental’. Whether it was an accident or not is surely immaterial, though.
Of course Shankland didn’t mean it. That doesn’t change the fact the ball hit his arm when it was hanging out like yesterday’s washing and nobody from the ref to the VAR to the AVAR felt that was an issue.
Livingston boss David Martindale has become disillusioned with VAR and wants it scrapped
Why? Why wasn’t the goal disallowed? It’s too easy to put it down to one big collective mental meltdown. Have we just got into a position here where the laws, complex as they are, added to the extra guidance given, are just causing too much confusion for everyone?
Collum admits Shankland’s effort should never have stood, but that doesn’t change much here. Why he also tried to obfuscate matters in his initial explanation by stating that the VAR was correct in stating that it wasn’t deliberate is a mystery. Most handballs are not deliberate. It doesn’t mean there aren’t decisions to be taken about them.
Watching the Shankland incident reach its unfathomable climax delivered a flashback to Livi boss David Martindale’s outburst after his team had lost to a late penalty that never was — an award somehow defended by Collum — at Dundee.
‘This can’t keep happening,’ said Martindale. ‘We are paying millions of pounds for people to make decisions using footage and we still seem to be getting it wrong.
‘I sit in the house and I’m watching it back and going: “Oh, maybe you’re allowed to handball it there if it’s not meant” with Shankland and stuff like that.
‘You’re coming up with explanations as to why it was allowed and then they come out later on in the week and say: “It shouldn’t have been a goal or it shouldn’t have been a penalty”.’
Rangers captain James Tavernier remonstrates with referee Steven McLean at Ibrox
That’s exactly where we all are right now. Everyone, clearly, from managers to the man in the pub. And having finally found someone yesterday who watched the VAR Review — and asked him whether I am losing my marbles — his answer spoke volumes.
If so much of this is falling at the feet of interpretation and subjectivity and officials in the VAR room who seem to be judging things on dodgy criteria, what’s the point of it any longer?
Martindale is just one guy who was all in favour of video technology and has changed his opinion completely. If the SFA aren’t careful, plenty of other stakeholders will be following his lead — with good reason.
