In a scene from the Coen Brothers 2007 film No Country for Old Men, Sheriff Bell , played by Tommy Lee Jones, and his sidekick Deputy Wendell are confronted by a clutch of corpses rotting under the desert sun, the result of a drug deal gone bad. Wendell’s rhetorical observation – “it’s a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?” – prompts a marvellously laconic reply from Bell: “If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here.”



That’s exactly what Australian football’s trial video assistant referee program feels like right now: a huge mess that everyone has to put up with until something even worse – namely, permanent implementation – comes along. In the quaint language of Perth Glory coach Kenny Lowe, officiating by video is “making a mockery of a lovely game”.

When we watch televised football we are watching television first and football second. A match seen through dozens of camera lenses is different to that perceived through the eye of the individual player, official or fan. The authorities sensed this early on, if unwittingly, when they decided that allowing controversial incidents to be replayed on screens inside stadiums was a sure way to stir up spectator anger.

So far, most arguments around the use of VARs in the A-League have been based upon a false opposition: that one is either for or against it. Former Socceroo Mark Bosnich sees video technology as an inherently good thing. It is, he argues, the implementation that is the problem.

Yet arguably, the key distinction to be made with VARs is between fact and opinion. An example from this past weekend stands as one of the few so far where the system has unequivocally worked in verifying a matter of fact – in the fixture between Sydney FC and Melbourne City, when a fierce shot from City’s Luke Brattan struck the crossbar, bounced down and back out into play.

Within seconds, a replay proved that the ball crossed the line. This was instantly conveyed to the referee and a goal properly awarded. No fuss, no drama – just an undeniable truth confirmed. Here the camera saw with certainly what the eye can only process fleetingly: a high-speed action that turns into a fragment of deteriorating memory almost as soon as the mind registers it.

This incident also reinforced the huge disconnect between reality and our technologically-enhanced version of it. Commentators and fans express outrage at the failings of referees based upon what we see through the medium of film, and in slow motion. These human failings – perfectly understandable in a case like Brattan’s goal, in the absence of supporting images – are then used as further evidence of the need for technology to intervene in all moments of contention.

The problem is that contention in football usually concerns matters of opinion, not fact. As countless recent examples from the A-League have illustrated, even when the camera serves as artificial memory what is actually seen differs from one individual to the next. As Lowe points out, the VAR is still just “another human making a decision”.

In this context, age-old rules like handball get buried beneath a morass of new “interpretations”. In their round eight tie in Adelaide, Western Sydney Wanderers defender Robbie Cornthwaite was dismissed after receiving a second yellow card for a handling offence which appeared entirely inadvertent. This past weekend Adelaide United were on the receiving end of an even poorer decision with a penalty awarded against defender Ryan Strain for a supposedly illegal intervention with his arm. Valiantly staving off apoplexy, afterwards the Reds’ suitably crimson-faced coach Marco Kurz could only say, “if that’s a penalty, I need glasses”.

And then there are the offsides. In round nine in Wellington, Melbourne Victory’s Besart Berisha was denied a wonderful goal when replays determined him offside in the lead-up. Consigning to history Fifa’s previous edict to the effect that “the benefit of any doubt should go to the attacking player”, apparently the VAR will now cause more and more goals to be disallowed based on hair’s breadth offences that the naked eye could never identify.

Further muddying the waters is the use of split-second freeze-framing, which renders some decisions near impossible. Berisha, for instance, appeared minutely offside in one frame but well onside in the next.

The VAR is also being liberally employed in cases of alleged foul play, causing referees to issue sanctions after much unseemly deliberation. Saturday night’s dismissal of Central Coast’s Jake McGing was seen as ridiculous even by players and officials from the opposing Western Sydney team. All this leads to howls for a more “efficient” system, though the question as to why such punishments cannot be meted out retrospectively where warranted, rather than dispersed willy-nilly in the heat of the contest, has yet to be answered. Wanderers coach Josep Gombau later suggested the VAR should be used once every five games, not five times every game.

What ultimately we are left with are exactly the same disagreements as before, now punctuated by stoppages in play while referees hold their hands to their ears, fight off bickering players and make “TV screen” signals with their hands. They then run off the field to review their own decisions, on a tiny screen before a baying crowd who more often than not will be vindicated in their anger.

At this particular historical juncture, football in Australia has more than enough problems to be concerned about. In these circumstances, Football Federation Australia might want to rethink exactly how the A-League is being used as guinea pig for such an experiment. Instead, competition head Greg O’Rourke is standing firm and indicating that the system merely needs further “tweaking”.

It is a standpoint far removed from that of Mariners coach Paul Okon who, after last weekend’s events, bemoaned how the use of VARs is “killing the love of football”. If the game continues to conflate fact with opinion and equate the eye of the camera with the myth of perfection, it is in danger of proving him right.