Chris Rattue: Video ref would be own goal for soccer

Daryl Harper. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Many of us were brought up to believe that the man to fear was the one with his hand on the button, although the thought never occurred that this threat to mankind would be a cricket umpire.

Poor Aussie video umpire Daryl Harper is in the gun after failing to hear the snick which should have ended South African captain Graeme Smith's innings on 15 in Johannesburg.

Smith scored 105 to set up a victory and a drawn series.

Blame is shifting fast here. The sporting universe turned on Harper, who used his Facebook site to defend himself by blaming a sound engineer.

If the engineer wants to blame his equipment, he will no doubt turn to Twitter.

This over-emphasis on one bad call is a glass-half-empty business, because for every crook video decision, and there are hardly any, there are plenty of correct ones being made which are bolstering cricket's standing.

Incorrect decisions such as the one involving Smith were a dime a dozen in the good old days.

Cricket has yet to get the video review system working entirely for the best, but the system is working and far better than most of the England batting was in the final test.

Video technology is everywhere, including in tennis and American football which use challenge systems, and of course in rugby union and league.

However the world game, soccer, continues to resist, and perhaps with very good reason, on reflection.

This week, French soccer fans breathed a huge sigh of relief when Thierry Henry was cleared to play in all of their World Cup finals games in South Africa.

Henry was world sport's public enemy No 1 - before Tiger Woods took hold of the baton so to speak - for the handball which led to a crucial qualifying goal against the Republic of Ireland.

Fifa's disciplinary committee ruled that under soccer's laws, using the hand to aid a goal is not a serious enough offence to warrant suspension.

The problem from the outset was that the match officials did not pick up the split-second offence and no amount of subsequent scrutiny, nor a ban, could change the result or get Ireland to South Africa.

Venting this frustration and fury by suspending Henry would have been a misdirected response in the general scheme of matters soccer.

At first glance, Henry's foul was prime evidence for introducing video technology, because the goal would have been so easy to rule out. Here was a stunning case where the television audience knew way more than the match officials.

Yet whereas the rugby codes desperately needed to add a legitimacy to the scoring of tries, the Henry controversy was rare in soccer.

There aren't that many disputed goals, or not ones that video could be used to sort out, so why try to fix something that is only mildly broken and risk smashing the whole game to bits.

Soccer is a game that needs to flow, where creeping interruptions could be fatal.

The crucial point is, where exactly would you cut off the technology?

Henry was not the actual goal scorer - what if he had handled the ball a few stages earlier in a scoring movement. How far back would you rewind the tape?

Once you start delving into that topic, then the unenthusiastic response to video technology adopted by Fifa's overlord Sepp Blatter becomes easier to understand.

The most frequent and contentious business in the goal scoring department, and all of soccer, is offside, yet the game would be ruined by disruptions if video analysis was used to judge this area.

Only a very advanced technology, using GPS, could sort that out, and may well do so one day.

This is one of those topics which, in the heat of the moment, throws up an obvious solution, which in turn becomes less obvious by the day.

Blatter and co. would undoubtedly like to institute ways of ensuring that goals such as the one scored by France against Ireland are disallowed, as would everyone.

This hornet's nest is best left unstirred, however. Money, giant pots of it, and technology, the intricate scrutiny of every decision, is starting to obliterate the beauty of sport and the human elements.

There may indeed be some sports which are best left to on-field officiating, free flowing and loosely structured basketball and soccer being two of them.

For the video buffs though, here is one possible way that video could be used in soccer.

Retrospective scrutiny would be limited to determining whether the ball crossed the goal line or not. This would include alerting a referee who had disallowed a goal where the ball had in fact crossed the line.

Blatter has said that only goal line technology would be considered, and even that has been rejected so far.

"Let football have this human face, where human errors participate in a human game," he said.

I can only agree, except to add there shouldn't be any foreseeable problem in extending the video scrutiny to ensure that the scorer had not used his hands. That would be the video refereeing cut-off point.

By my rule suggestion, the French goal would stand, but Maradona's Hand of God effort against England in 1986 would have been ruled out, as should Geoff Hurst's infamous line-ball goal against West Germany in 1966.

Beyond that however, the more you analyse the potential use of technology in football, the more of a minefield you discover.

No wonder Fifa is treading so carefully. Take this too far, and the man with his hand on the button may indeed blow the beautiful game to smithereens.

* The record book shows that Australia crushed Pakistan by 3-0 in their test cricket series. Believe it or not Pakistan could have won the series, but for atrocious catching. The old cricket adage that catches win matches has never been more relevant.

* Maria Sharapova versus Maria Kirilenko at the Australian Open was unwatchable for audio reasons. The raucous Russians screamed on every point - the resulting effect being like a never ending and excruciating echo.

The situation has reached a point where tennis has no intention of cleaning this disaster up. This appalling screaming is nothing short of cheating, designed to put opponents off.

Instead, it puts the spectators off. The effort required to hit a tennis ball in no way needs an accompanying scream of this magnitude. Many people, in all walks of life, exert themselves with far more force without screeching like a crazy baby.

Sharapova and Kirilenko made one feel like screaming ... before hitting the off button.