A (video) disappointment

Our short catalogue of weekend disappointments yesterday inexplicably failed to mention the video decision-assist farce on Saturday night.

 

This debacle highlighted problem after problem with this ill-considered, hastily-cobbled together system. Well, it is allegedly a system.

 

First problem: despite good co-operation and perfect positioning of the two umpires with primary responsibility for making the decision, the ‘video umpire’ chose to check their decision anyway. If this isn’t a poor-enough decision in the first place, the individual concerned must have known that the views he would be served were inherently inferior to those of the umpires on the spot.

 

Second problem: the decision of the best-positioned umpires was overturned despite the video ‘evidence’ being significantly short of conclusive. A system supposedly designed to improve accuracy actually overturned the correct decision on the flimsiest of pretexts.

 

Third problem: the decision to review was made just as the ball was about to be bounced to restart play after the goal had been awarded to the Barcodes. Had a behind been signalled, and been the wrong decision as was subsequently revealed, this review would never have happened.

 

Had there been cameras designed to cover the goal line between the behind post and goal post, there may have been a definitive view, but we didn’t have them. Channel Seven chose to showcase their technology, but apparently reckoned without ‘the fat bit’, as Dennis Cometti is fond of calling it, which obscured the goal line and the point of the football. The line between the goal posts was deemed worthy of coverage in the same plane, but no others.

 

Instead, this crock of a decision was made based on a camera shooting at an angle to the line with no point of reference and next to no context.

 

The genius who dreamed this ‘system’ and process up should be summarily dismissed. It’s gilt-edged crap. (Are you listening, Adrian?)