Sports obsession with perfection is making it more imperfect.

 

It is wet, but surprisingly humid night in Melbourne as Victory is doing battle with Wellington.  Victory needs to win to keep their unbeaten run going, while Wellington are finishing up the season so they can finally go home to their families after spending another season away in a bubble.  In the 2^nd half Victory score what they think is their 2^nd goal of the game after having one earlier disallowed due to VAR (Video Assistant Referee).  The players celebrate, the crowd goes nuts and the coaches high five each other.  Then the ref gets summoned by VAR.  Players, coaches, supporters, and the TV audience now wait 7 mins for the ref to go through 3 structures of play before disallowing a goal but giving a penalty to Victory for handball which is scored.  The sad thing about this is I am not making this up.  This happened on Friday night.  Incidents like this are happening all around the world not just in Football, but most sports that have major media coverage now use technology that according to the administrators of the relevant sport federations help decide contentious decisions an Umpire/Referee/Officials have to make.  This however has only frustrated the sports fan, players, and coaches to no end.  Over the last decade the move to rush technology onto the sporting field has come at such a high speed, most supporters are grappling with how it has affected their viewing and how they show their support.  You notice in football when a goal is scored players and supporters look to the ref to see if VAR will summons them to the TV screen.  The huge screams when a goal is scored it isn’t as loud as it used to be, and the ref isn’t 100% certain on their decision.  In AFL goal umpires are constantly using the video review to check if a fingernail touched a ball and just adding more time to the game.

 

You can feel momentum in the event of sport itself is changing.  It seems to be stop start all the time and that takes away a lot of the enjoyment of playing and watching sport.  The only sport it seems to work is Tennis which is where the introduction of technology in sport began.  However, Tennis was always going to be easy to set up technology such as Hawkeye.  It only has 2 to 4 players on the court, there is separation between opponents, the court is a small area and the decisions that need to be made are quite simple where if a ball is in, out or hit the net.  In the football codes such as AFL, Rugby, Football and even Gridiron this is not so easy.  You have many more players on a pitch much larger than a tennis court that are tackling and colliding with each other.  There is a need for more equipment to use such as cameras and microphones and in the sports administrators, wisdom use the media companies’ equipment to supply this to the event.  However, if sports administrators were serious about using technology, then they would have more cameras covering all angles, rather then relying on the media companies supplying the equipment.  If you watch AFL, you will have seen a decision where the camera angle just wasn’t able to give a clear-cut vision of the incident in question and you sit there scratching your head wondering what the point of is having the replay if you don’t have the right equipment.

 

Frankly for me technology is ruining sport and taking away one of its greatest assets which is witnessing and enjoying the big moments in a game.  Can you imagine if VAR, video replays and snicko were around years ago?  Warnie’s ball of the century would have replays if he no balled and delay the moment, Diego Maradona’s famous dribbling goal in the 86 World Cup or David Campese scoring the winning try against the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup.  We sit there and wait for a person in room to gives us the thumbs up or down like Ceasar in the Colosseum.  There is a fear about controversy that has seeped in from general society into sport.  We are so scared to not have controversy that we are sacrificing the enjoyment that sport provides to us.  A heap of memorable moments in sport have been controversial.  The 1979 VFL Grand Final where Wayne Harmes punched by ball allegedly from over the boundary line that got the goal that won Carlton the premiership or Geoff Hurst’s second goal in the 1966 World Cup Final may or may not have gone over the line.  This is a couple of examples that will live on forever and will be talked about long after we have left the Earth.  Sport reflects life.  There are great moments that make you cry tears of joy, there are horrific moments that the tears of pain come out in droves, moments of anger, sadness and moments that make you confused.  That is what sport is a mixture of emotions.  So why are taking these pure moments away?

 

 

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