Duffers' Diaries: VAR - Nope, I still hate it

There, I said it. I’ve said it all along and it’s a hill I’ll die on.

This won’t be the first opinion column debating its value, nor the last, but each week I see more VAR-related situations that annoy me so I felt like letting off steam.

Yes, the team and nation I support may have benefited from its usage on numerous levels since its introduction, but it’s also been an incredible annoyance and that eventually becomes the overriding emotion with regard to it.

And I know it often (not always) produces the ‘correct’ decisions in the end and that it’s ensured fair justice has frequently been served when particular incidents have been scrutinised, but it’s not so much the ultimate accuracy or fairness about it all that is the issue in my eyes.

Along with so many other watchers of the game, it’s the more pernickety side of it that is what ruins things for me; the decisions/referrals that are over such minute detail that it just doesn’t seem worth going to the trouble for.

That’s especially the case with offsides, where being able to see that a player is off by the width of a toenail – whilst technically correct and ‘offside is offside’ and all that – just gets more irritating every time it happens irrespective of which team is being inconvenienced by it.

It’s not just offsides, with fouls, handball decisions and so on also often becoming incredibly over-analysed and frequently with the outcome still being up for considerable debate.

It’s a tough job, being an official. Heck, I’ve run the line at some of my daughter’s under-11 games this season and it’s given me a new-found (if somewhat grudging) respect for those who choose it as a viable career option given how your eyes have to be in about three places at the same time.

But as with referees, we got by for donkey’s years without them getting assistance from someone in a room hundreds of miles away and it’s only come to undermine the job a lot of officials do, whether or not it’s one they do well.

And don’t get me started on the nonsense creeping in where refs are now going to tell everyone over the PA system how they’ve made what is still blatantly the wrong decision.

I’m someone who watches non-league football every week, and whilst I’m not sure on the exact percentage, the vast majority of those going to games in this country are watching a match without the risk of VAR intervention, and I much prefer it.

Of course there are controversial decisions, plenty of wrong ones but also plenty of correct ones too. The human element has always been part of the game and whilst it’s true the technology now exists to not have to rely on that all the time, it’s just not how it should be. Call me ‘old school’ or whatever.

After all, aren’t these things supposed to ‘level themselves out over the course of a season…’?`

At the risk of sounding contradictory, I should add here that I’ll make an allowance for goal line technology, which due to the immediacy of any decision is something I can live with, as is the fact that its accuracy is pretty much hitting 100 per cent with the very odd incident where it’s not done its job properly for whatever reason. The fact it’s only used at certain levels means not everyone benefits but that’s just fine.

If we’re going to keep VAR, which let’s face it, we are, can we at least not limit the amount it’s used? I’ve seen the argument a few times that any VAR referral should be up to the team captain and that each team gets three ‘appeals’ per game, maximum, or maybe we could say two per half. It works well in cricket and in tennis, for example, with the equivalent systems they have in place, and I honestly think it would benefit football too.

Whether clubs would go for that is another issue – a recent vote saw Premier League clubs 19-1 in favour of keeping VAR as a whole so you’d imagine any changes at all wouldn’t get much of a look-in unless it’s forced.

Either way, watching top level football just isn’t the same anymore, and I’ll keep on moaning about it for a while yet.

Or at least until England win the World Cup thanks to the opposition being denied an equaliser by VAR in the last seconds of extra-time in the final, anyway.