VAR is removing the colour and chaos from sport. It’s time for a renaissance

Thanks Richie, I’ve got this.

For, I’m sorry everyone, but I am just going to have to go with me on this one. Let’s just be a team and do things my way.

For three and a half yonks now, I have been on about the horrors of video referees in sport doing two things at once: slowing down the action, and draining the colour from it thanks to endlessly sanitised, analysed and anodyne decisions. For if sport is not colourful and romantic, what is the point?

Cue my favourite line on the subject. In Graham Greene’s wonderful screenplay for The Third Man, Orson Welles delivers the immortal line: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

(It was actually the Bavarians, but never mind.)

Ditto, the best of sport. It is meant to be messy – and out of that mess and chaos comes genius, colour and romance. But what have we seen this week? We’ve seen technology kill romance stone motherless dead.

Roll the tape.

Look to the West Ham v Arsenal match in the English Premier League played at London Stadium on Sunday, where the Gunners are fighting for the title and the Hammers are clinging on like a cat to a curtain, fighting to avoid relegation.

Deep into injury time, with Arsenal holding a 1-0 lead, West Ham take a corner kick, and in the maelstrom of flying bodies, the ball finds its way to the back of the net!

Goal. Goal. GOAAAAAAL! A goal for your life, I’ll tell a man it is!

The Gunners are thwarted, while the Hammers are saved, saved I tell you! But no … now let’s go to VAR.

Let’s stop the whole thing for four minutes, while everything is reviewed at treacle speed – think ScoMo in slo-mo – with antiseptic analysis, every angle examined, all cameras checked, and at the end of endless discussion about whether somewhere in that maelstrom someone might have committed a foul, the decision is made.

And the loser is … Sport.

For the decision is made to go with the sporting anti-climax to beat them all: No goal. The result is devastation and deflation all round – bar, admittedly, pockets of delight where Arsenal fans are found.

But the point remains: the very nature of VARs is to slow everything down, and use technology to reveal what the human eye cannot see in real time: reasons for romance to die, not live.

Is this what sport has been reduced to? Broadly, yes.

Video technology was introduced to negate the absolute clanger – and fair enough, if it can be done quickly and painlessly, in 30 seconds or so. But four minutes of more angled analysis than Zapruder’s film? (Ask your grandparents).

No, just no. And we see much the same thing in the NRL and Super Rugby all the time.

The ref awards the try in good faith – because to all intents and purposes it was a try and a splendid one at that – only for minutes of dullness to ensue while the bunker reviews, frame by forensic frame, before doing what it was born to do – kills it off.

Sport needs to get on top of this. It needs to be more Italian about things – allow latitude for attitude, space for brilliance – and less Swiss.

In sum?

In sum – and here’s something I don’t say often – Phil Gould is right. The understanding has to be to go with what the ref or the umpire saw in real time, in the real world, unless the bunker spots a howler in the first 30 seconds or so. Move away from black-letter law and go with the spirit of Dennis Denuto, in The Castle: “It’s the vibe.”

If it looks like a try or a goal, then it bloody well is a try or a goal – unless the bunker sees otherwise straight away.

Any other approach is cuckoo.

Why 50 is the new 40

And yet while in this philosophical mood to take a long view on sport, another trend is a beauty – longevity.

We are seeing it right now in Aussie Rules, particularly.

Back in 1983, Kevin Bartlett played his 400th VFL game for Richmond before finishing on a record 403 at the age of 36. Eight years later, Michael Tuck played his record 426th game for Hawthorn, before retiring at 40. It was thought at the time that record would never be broken but in 2016, “Boomer” Harvey finished on 432 games at the age of 38, and next week, Scott Pendlebury was due to bring up game No. 433 for Collingwood against Sydney on Friday night. He is 38, with no announced intent to retire. Good.

When the millennium clicked over, there were two players in the 400 club. Now there are half a dozen.

Elsewhere in sport, Tom Brady retired at 45, while LeBron James is still going strong – ish – at 41. Novak Djokovic is still out there, and threatening, at 39. Some time in the next couple of decades, we will surely get to an elite sportsperson pushing on into their 50s. Why not? Let sagacity trump sass; old age outsmart rage and wisdom pull rank on wise-crackers. It is good to watch, and part of the romance of sport. (See above . . .)

Joke of a team

Friends? This is a gag doing the rounds on social media.

What do Iran and St George have in common?

They have both had their leadership decapitated, for no discernible change!

(I’m here until Thursday. Try the veal!)

What they said

Olympic swimmer Scott Miller on being in prison: “People ask me what prison was like. Think of the Australian Institute of Sport [in Canberra] but with no women or pools.”

GWS banner ahead of their game against Essendon:

“Strengths:
“Weaknesses: 7916 days.”

Ouch.

Phil Gould to James Bracey – a director of the Perth Bears – on 100% Footy: “What do you need help for? It’s not a charity mate, it’s a competition.”

Storm coach Craig Bellamy on not updating the media about his illness: “At the end of the day, this is private to me, and footy’s what you’re here for.” Fair enough.

Mal Meninga on the Perth Bears: “Yes, there have been rumours around that I get paid well, but it’s beyond what you get paid. It’s using my experience, my love of the game and my profile in the game. My ‘why?’ is I want to leave the game in a better place.” Odd.

Real Madrid manager Alvaro Arbeloa after there was a scuffle in the dressing room between players: “I’ve had a teammate who picked up a golf club and swung it at another player. What happens in the Real Madrid dressing room should stay in the Real Madrid dressing room, and that’s what hurts me the most.” Yeah, nah. The notion is that “What happens on tour stays on tour,” and “What happens on the field stays on the field”. Dressing room events are open season.

New York Knicks coach Mike Brown on his star player Jalen Brunson: “I’m Linus. Jalen’s my blanket. He helps me relax at a lot of different times during the course of the game.” If you don’t get this, ask your parents. If they don’t get it, ask your grandparents.

IOC head Kirsty Coventry on having to rein things in: “This is our product. We should regain that control. And we should look after it. And we should figure out how we want potentially new sports, innovative sports and disciplines to come onto the programme. We can’t continue to just get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

Liverpool player Joe Gomez: “It’s a Catch 22 sometimes when you’re trying to control the game, keep possession. We expect to dominate possession percentage-wise any game we’re in, but that isn’t always high-paced, trying to thread the ball in behind and score.” That might be a conundrum, or even a Catch 21, but it is not a Catch 22.

Australian NBA player Dyson Daniels on how he will invest the trappings of his new and improved contact: “I’m bit iffy on Bitcoin. Once, [Matthew Dellavedova] got a hold of me, he sat me down for a good hour and gave me the presentation, so I’m a bit iffy on that.”

Ivan Cleary on his eventual departure from the Panthers head coach’s job: “This is not a time for thank yous or reflections, I still have 18 months in the saddle, so to speak. I honestly woke up this morning thinking about the Dragons and how we’re going to beat them this week.” Seriously, Ivan? Thinking about the Dragons? You and your mob could phone that one in from a beach Bali.

Gout Gout on coach Di Sheppard on US 60 Minutes: “The old white lady and the young black kid, you know. It’s a crazy dynamic but turns out it works perfectly. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Rory McIlroy admitting he was wrong at the time for suggesting a PGA Tour/LIV peace deal: “I’m glad I was wrong. I can admit when I’m wrong, and that was one that I did get wrong.” Broadly, he was acknowledging he was wrong because LIV was always going to implode on its own.

Team of the Week

Melbourne City and Wellington Phoenix. Contesting the A-League Women grand final on Saturday.

Michael Voss. Proved to be the exemplar of the old rule: a champion player rarely becomes a champion coach. Can you think of any examples in world sport where a champion player went on to have an equal career as coach? Early on, it looked like Deion Sanders might, but that’s faded.

Socceroos. In a group with our friends from Iraq, Tajikistan and Singapore for next year’s Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia.

State of Origin. Start your engines. It’s already that time of year. Squads are chosen this weekend and game one in Sydney is only a week and a half away.

RIP Mal Anderson. Australian tennis player who won 1957 US Open and twice lost the Australian Open final has died age 91.

RIP Leslie ‘John’ Howard OAM 1941–2026. One of the great servants of Australian rugby, credited with conceptualising the first Rugby World Cup among other things, passed away this week. Vale, John.