We straw polled our readers earlier to ask if Rangers fans agreed with Barry Ferguson and Super Ally’s assertion that they want VAR abolished.
While a significant number did agree with the legendary pair, the majority were definitely against the notion of removing the only hint of fairness within the Scottish game.
VAR is not perfect, we already know this – at the end of the day we still see decisions we don’t agree with, and the VAR refs will get things wrong even with the full video evidence.
The difference now? There are infinitely less errors and far fewer incidents have been missed or incorrectly reviewed one way or the other.
The only problem is the errors are so high profile that ‘how could they possibly get that wrong’. In other words, there’s less errors now, but they’re far more prominent due to the outrage that even video evidence was mistaken.
So Barry and Ally have attacked the man and not the ball.
Italy has been the longest with VAR – going back years now, and it’s the most just league of them all, even if they too get things wrong as well – it just takes some time for all the officials to get a full grip of VAR and the errors will continue to lessen.
What’s Ally and Barry’s problem? Traditionalists, that’s about all it is. Disliking the ‘faffing’ and ‘consultation’ and the sense the ref is now less in control than he or she was. Understandable in a sense.
It’s not about that at all though. It’s about a support network for the ref, who gets 90% of decisions right and without need for another team. But when things do get conflated, get confused, there’s far more profile on that 10% of calls in which they stop the game to get backup on the earpiece.
And when the final outcome appears wrong, it ‘justifies’ the abolition of VAR.
No it doesn’t – it just means we need to get better at it. More efficient. And that takes practise.
Dumping the only sane thing in Scottish football because of an imperfect first season of its operation is just knee jerk.
We have respect for Barry and Ally, but we do feel they need to give it more of a chance.
The day a Rangers win happens because VAR overturned a bad call against us against Celtic is the day everyone will be onside.