VAR Check in Progress

  Well, here we are the final post! This is where I will detail my final thoughts and conclusions, in a sense, as to what VAR means to football and whether it will ultimately benefit or destroy our beautiful game. After contemplating hard over VAR looking at the major pros and cons, how it would affect Scottish football and even how similar technology has been used in other sports, I can say that my overall consensus is that VAR will benefit football in the long run. I think VAR, however, still requires key adjustments and fine tuning. In particular, how long decisions can take to make. Key matches where the game is end-to-end can be disrupted for several minutes, which is so infuriating and can seriously affect the nature of the match.  That being said it has the potential to vastly improve the game. As previous posts have covered, there is evidence to point it to it working. Notably, how well it works in other sports like Rugby because of how well they have adapted it over t...

This penultimate post is slightly different to the previous works of art, as it concerns how other sports such as rugby use VAR like technology in their game. How does it work? Is it successful? Well that's what this blog post will look to answer, while seeing if there is any lessons for football's VAR. Rugby has featured video assistant technology for quite some time. In fact, Rugby union first implemented the use of the television match official (TMO) back in 2001. The main intervention points for a TMO are for an act of scoring or foul play. These incidents will affect the scoreboard, requirement for a ruling on disciplinary actions or, sometimes both. Obviously, just like football, these are important to get right as they can massively affect the outcome of the match. One of the main plus points of how the technology is operated in rugby is the fact that when a match is televised, supporters can listen to the referee's thought process aloud, during TV commentary broadca...

This blog post concerns a topic very close to my heart and one that has been part of my life since I can remember; Scottish football. I have, along with my old man, supported Kilmarnock FC and been a season ticket holder since I was a wee guy! (4 years old). I have travelled across the country and have experienced every emotion under the sun (and snow) supporting Kilmarnock. From beating Celtic in the final of the 2012 league cup, qualifying for Europe under Steve Clarke and heartbreakingly, only last season, being relegated to the dreaded championship (2nd tier of Scottish football). So, as you can probably guess, I will be giving my humble opinion on the effects that VAR will have on Scottish football and whether or not it will improve the beautiful game over here - as it seems only inevitable that it will be introduced in the coming years. The reason Scottish football has not introduced VAR already is that the Scottish FA simply couldn't afford it. I feel this came as a blessing...

Hello and welcome back to the 'VAR Check in Progress' blog. This post, as promised, is all about the pros of VAR. The Premier League were on the phone asking me to focus on the positives as there was talks it was getting scrapped after the last post; so here it goes. The standout positive from VAR is the elimination of human error and thereby the allowance for better decision making to be made in matches. Pre-VAR, the monumental pressure of making the correct decisions in a game relied solely on the officiating personnel and ultimately the referee. With the introduction of VAR, it relives the referee of this pressure  to an extent. It allows them to take a minute (or 5) to look at the footage and make a more informed decision. Before, the referee had a split second to do this, and they had to rely solely on their own judgement. In the past, during a game, there was no possible way for the referee to realise they had made made a mistake until they saw their face plastered acros...

  In this deep dive into VAR and all of its impacts, I'm first going to go straight in studs-up at the major negatives I feel it brings to football. I hate to refer back to the 'good old days', like your gran saying she used to go to the shops with a couple pound and come back with the weeks shopping. However, it seems justified in order to understand, truly, how much VAR has changed the game. I think I don't speak alone here when I say that the idea of VAR is currently still better than how it is being executed. The idea is to eliminate the human errors of a referee and the other officiating staff. So that, ultimately, the match can run fairly and smoothly and for the outcome to be decided based on the merit of the respective teams rather than an unjust decision made by the referee. To an extent this is the case (which the next blog will cover) but there are still some major flaws present that are harming the game. The one that sticks out for me is how stop-start it ca...