This is the kind of season VAR was built for. Three teams fighting tooth and nail for the league title, pressure building, 16 games to go, every one of them high-stakes, every one of them subject to forensic investigation, every referee involved being pulled apart by the public over every decision.
It’s where video technology should come into its own. It should be a safety net and source of support for the match officials. It should ensure every big decision is correct. That there are no major miscarriages of justice. That the right team wins fairly and squarely in the end.
In Scotland, though, it just feels like a disaster waiting to happen. One big ticking timebomb ready to wreck the most exciting campaign in decades and leave fires that cannot be put out blazing all over the country.
Confidence in the system here started wavering some time ago. With every passing episode of Willie Collum’s monthly VAR Review show, though, it just moves closer and closer to evaporating completely.
All over the planet right now, there are conversations taking place to try and mitigate the effects of video reviews on the spontaneous beauty of the game. Arsene Wenger has a really flawed idea – to be discussed by IFAB this week – about clear daylight being required between attacker and last defender before an offside is given.
Willie Collum’s VAR review has shown referees in a poor light this season
VAR chaos could end up having a say in a thrilling three-way Premiership title race
The fact it took five minutes and 40 seconds to disallow Manchester City forward Antoine Semenyo’s goal against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup semi-final in midweek also highlighted some of bugs and problems that still exist with even the best equipment going.
The biggest problem in the SPFL Premiership, though, has nothing to do with the equipment. It is the individuals charged with operating it.
Over and over again, they are found guilty of making decisions – with the benefit of endless re-runs – that simply beggar belief in addition to leaving on-field referees and linesmen hanging out to dry.
And at some point in the coming weeks and months, probably more than once, there is going to be an explosion at the top end of the table rather than the passing fireworks we have had so far with the usual suspects such as Livingston’s David Martindale or Stephen Robinson of St Mirren down in the lower reaches where no one really pays the same amount of attention.
It feels almost preordained that Hearts or Celtic or Rangers are going to find themselves at the centre of an absolute firestorm over some crazy mistake from the VAR team that shapes the destination of the battle for the flag.
And that’s scandalous. It’s scandalous that pretty much all trust has gone in a set-up that should exist to make sure the very opposite happens, that almost every decision – certainly every gamechanging one – can be banked upon as the correct call.
For all the issues with their general standard in Scotland, we all want to be supportive of referees. For many, it was one of the compelling reasons to bring VAR into the Scottish game. Human error is inevitable when you only have one shot at judging incidents that play out in a split-second.
Surely it can only be good to have other pairs of eyes available to do everything possible to make sure clear and obvious errors are kept to the minimum if not obliterated completely. Not here. Not always, anyway.
Andrew Dallas is a VAR specialist but has been at the heart of some contentious decisions
You see, we’ve gone beyond the point of video assistant referees just compounding the felonies of on-field officials by failing to spot obvious mistakes. They’re now disallowing perfectly good goals for nothing, searching desperately for infringements that simply aren’t there.
And what makes it worse that the guilty party on the latest edition of Collum’s Sky Sports show was the guy deemed a ‘specialist’ in operating the technology, Andrew Dallas, son of former SFA high heid yin Hugh.
Dallas junior was infuriating enough as a ref. He is going beyond the pale with this new gig handed to him after injury ended his career as a man-in-the-middle. What on earth was he thinking when sending referee Chris Graham to the monitor after Jonah Ayunga had scored for St Mirren against Livingston late last month?
Jonah Ayunga’s effort against Livingston was ruled out after VAR intervention
Dan Nlundulu gets away from Daniel Finlayson, puts in a cross and Ayunga finishes. Job done. Yes, Finlayson hit the deck holding his face, but anyone reviewing the footage could see what happened.
Nlundulu’s arm did catch him, slightly, but there was no force, no malice, no intent. It was just a natural movement of the body as he spun away from his man. Even Collum said so in his reflections on the incident.
It’s impossible to see what Dallas was thinking and incredible that he should be telling Graham what he was going to see before ordering him pitchside. This has happened with other officials, it should be said, but it reeks of planting a seed in the referee’s mind and putting him under pressure to agree with those in the control room.
Dallas has been having an absolute shocker of late, mind you. Over and above the fact Collum was skating on thin ice when defending his decision to allow Celtic defender Julian Araujo’s shocking tackle on Will Ferry of Dundee United last weekend to remain a yellow card, it’s only been a few months since his almighty brainfart during Dundee’s visit to Falkirk.
Julian Araujo was lucky to avoid a red card in Celtic’s victory over Dundee United
You’ll remember that one. Referee Ross Hardie books the home side’s Ethan Hamilton for going down in the area when he has clearly been booted with extreme force by Kyrell Wilson after touching the ball. Dallas views the footage and somehow agrees he got it right.
It’s bonkers. Unfathomable stuff. And this is the bloke supposedly seen as the best VAR in the country. Certainly, if you look at the Scottish Cup card over this weekend, where he was VAR at Tynecastle and will be the AVAR at Celtic’s game with Auchinleck, the SFA still seem right behind him.
As for the other ‘specialist’ on the scene, Greg Aitken is the guy who allowed Lawrence Shankland to get away with a blatant handball in the lead-up to scoring in Hearts’ 2-0 win at Rangers in September.
Lawrence Shankland scored a key goal against Rangers despite handling the ball in the build up
Lessons don’t look like they are getting learned either. On Friday night, Collum also admitted that it was wrong for Livingston to be denied a penalty when Kilmarnock’s Brad Lyons clearly moved his hand towards the ball inside the box. We went through this with Livi in late November, though, when Rangers’ Manny Fernandez did much the same.
By now, many of us had hoped the VAR Review would have become more of an educational tool for supporters than an exercise in Collum saying sorry for errors. It hasn’t. If anything, it has ended up a useful piece of evidence in the argument that someone independent really needs to come in from outside and take a good look under the bonnet at the SFA’s refereeing department.
That won’t happen before the end of the season. Although further jaw-dropping foul-ups in some of the games that really, really matter over the run-in will most definitely give weight to the case for wholesale change. Right now, they feel depressingly inescapable, a toxic cloud hanging over what should be the most exhilarating end to a season for years.
