R6 vs Perth Glory | Sun 2nd Dec | 7pm | Westpac Stadium

Because referees communicate via radio?

Even so, he wouldn't really want to accidentally crush into Dura studs up, would he? And if he did, then we have bigger problems than this!

I lean towards reckless / yellow myself, but I can see why others would rule red. Best test is to watch the clip on stuff of the full speed contact. The still highlights how contact is made, but not the intensity, agreed.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/a-league/1090...

Look, we do use comms in local football, and the instructions are it complements, not replaces signals. May be different at that level, and really ARs operate to the parameters set by the ref on the day.

Well, I don't know it for a fact, but I'd be surprised if the comms aren't the go-to at the A-league level. They are obviously more instantenous - so in a situation like this incident, if the AR says foul, and the referee immediately reacts to it and blows the whistle, then AR's flag is redundant in that situation, at least to my eyes. 

Simple hand in back foul - Radio in use by AR. Big contrast

Sorry, that's a bit too cryptic for me.

One game ban confirmed for Lowry

https://www.wellingtonphoenix.com/news/independent...

How do you know that he did not?

Also this:

https://www.a-league.com.au/news/whistle-round-6-refereeing-var-incidents-explained

End of Topic and we move on.

While at the same time, ignoring the very first sentence - 

On the advice of the assistant referee, the referee gave a direct free kick for a tackle by Ryan Lowry

.

Great having a reasoned, well informed, discussion with you.

"On the advice of the assistant referee, the referee gave a direct free kick for a tackle by Ryan Lowry. The VAR believed that the on-field match officials had missed a serious incident due to the lack of any sanction for Lowry. The VAR formed the view that the contact by Lowry with his studs to Chris Ikonomidis’ leg met the considerations for serious foul play and he advised the referee accordingly.

The referees prioritise protecting player safety and this caused the VAR to recommend the referee review the tackle to make his own assessment. Having seen a replay of the tackle, the referee decided that the tackle constituted serious foul play and sent Lowry from the field of play.

In the Referees Department’s weekly post-round review, it was determined that the correct outcome should have been a yellow card for a reckless tackle. You will have seen that earlier this afternoon the Match Review Panel (MRP) did not overturn the red card issued to Lowry. The reason for this is that the MRP can only overturn a red card if all 3 MRP members determine that in the circumstances no card was warranted."

Emphasis mine but a pretty clear indication that the fudgeed up

Interesting that they don't provide commentary of VAR incidents that don't change an on-field call - such as the penalty shout in the first half. I'd really like to understand their interpretation of that incident as much as the Lowry decision.

Edit: Am I also reading correctly that had the referee actually issued a yellow card at the time VAR wouldn't have been involved as there as a punishment for the player being the FK?

Thats correct, if a yellow had been issued.

that's how I understand it, if a sanction had bee given - ie yellow - the VAR stays shushed. All comes down to the ref's decision not to act in the first instance.

I see  that VAR has been fast tracked into the The Euro Champions League from the quarter finals due to the number of errors made by referees. Initially it was not intended to introduce VAR to The Champions League until next season.

Gee that's ironic.

Dunno was a very rash tackle, which must partly down to him playing out of position

watched this again.

Lowry makes the challenge, clears the ball. Ikonomidis looks where the ball is going as a result of Lowry's intervention, turns and makes a move to where an already committed, post-challenge Lowry is sliding through. The challenge is not on Ikonomidis. Debatable if it's a foul.

The player in most danger is Dura.

foul by Ikonomidis if anything :)

Regardless of all these intricacies, the fact remains that VAR is meant to correct clear and obvious errors and this really is not a clear and obvious error or else there wouldn't be all this debate. VAR is meant to reduce controversy and once again it fails miserably.

personally I think the problem is largely the operators understanding of his function - as you say CT the VAR is there only to clear up any obvious errors - currently it looks and feels as though the VAR operator is under the belief he is reffing the game and therefore intervening where he isnt needed. In our current one the AR flags it, ref calls foul. All good move on, there is no error there. Even if the VAR thought the tackle was more serious the ref called a foul and there was no need to add any more. Let the coaches ask for a review or something if they think something was any more malicious. 

If I could offer some measured commentary, unless you have seen/heard the footage/convo between AR, Ref, VAR and AVAR then it’s all shots in the dark. A couple of folk are close, but others (Blew 2) are very wide of the mark. There is a lot of noise out there that is being taken as gospel when it really shouldn’t.

If you want to get to the bottom of what happened, can I suggest that a good angle is to go through/discuss the process as to what should happen with VAR/Ref and onfield review and why. That will pretty much give most of you the answers you all seek. As a parallel, consider Ronaldos’ YC against Iran at the WC for the elbow to the head because a lot of that process there is very very similar.

I’ll also leave you with the following commentary from the press whereby the CEO says technically correct but shouldn’t be up to the VAR, head of referees says wrong and should be only a YC and the MRP says it could be a RC. Make of that what you will.

But how was the assault on Libby in the first ten  a warning only. 

Need balance ?

The last paragraph says it all. Unless officials in the a-league can get on the same page, then VAR should be scrapped. The instruction to VARs is to avoid intervening in subjective and technical decisions which are not clearly and obviously wrong and leave those decisions to the on-field match officials.

How was the involvement of the VAR consistent with this? I understand the ref didn't see the incident, but the AR did. Have we now invented a new rule that there is a lower threshold for review if the decision is based on advice from the AR rather than the decision being made directly by the referee? Otherwise, this is just the VAR and the referee reinterpreting a subjective and technical decision made by the referee based on advice from the AR.

Even if you still disagree and think the VAR should have been involved, how is it consistent with the intent of the system to upgrade the punishment from a free kick all the way up to a red card? If a yellow card had been issued, there is no way the VAR would have got involved ... which just goes to show how perverse the final outcome was (both the red card and the refusal from the MRP to overturn the decision).

An absolute farce no matter which way you look at it.

Good questions.

To answer your question, can I pose this:

A player punches another player in the face. AR catches a glimpse of it and says ‘foul’ through the comms and nothing else and referee gives the foul only. Do you want VAR to intervene?

Reading above, your answer is no?

Before you answer, this has happened (pre-VAR). I can tell you what your answer would be if the VAR does not intervene.

Yes, I do want the VAR to intervene. The difference for me is that this is a clear and obvious error as I'd say it's highly unlikely that you'd find a reasonable referee who would say a punch in the face isn't a red card.

I haven't heard much about comms between the ref, AR and VAR ... but I suspect there is a lot of room for improvement here. To take your example, a lot of the controversy would be removed from the situation if the ref and AR communicated with both the captains and the VAR that there was a definitely foul, but that the incident hadn't been seen clearly enough to make a determination about the seriousness of the foul. From my perspective, this would de-escalate the situation when the decision is changed from free kick to red card.

I think those watching on tv would also benefit if the VAR gave an explanation of the final decision to the commentators. There's a real opportunity to educate everyone watching what the thought process is for officials when making these types of decisions.

exactly this! a punch is clearly serious foul play, and you'd expect the VAR to get involved. However, a tackle that results in an incidental contact with a player is not a scenario that id expect the VAR to be involved.

how do you expect the referee to determine if the contact is incidental or not, if he hasn't seen it?

Whatever decision you make, half the people on the field will be unhappy. Such is life.Trying to justify your decisions in the heat of the moment is by and large not useful.

thats where his AR comes in who, in this case, actually advised foul to which the ref responded. It was at that point that the VAR came in and advised he should take another look at it. From the point of "clear and obvious error" being the VAR's guiding premise I believe that is where the mistake has occurred. There was no clear and obvious error with the decision to award a foul.

But not showing a red card for a punch is a clear and obvious error, as others above have pointed out. To turn that question back around, would fans be debating this much and would officials come out and question the decision in the media in the no-red-card-for-a-punch scenario?

That hypothetical scenario is quite different to the call on Lowry, which even the A League's match review panel couldn't agree on.

I disagree. If fans and commentators have transparent access to VAR's decision making process than this may encourage VAR to be particularly careful about staying within its parameters. Obviously fans are biased too but I have often been initially puzzled by a VAR holdup to play in other codes, only to realise on hearing the audio feed that a video analysis of the incident was well and truly justified.

This view may be poorly received on this forum but here goes anyway...

Yes the Referee, and to a lesser extent the VAR, fudgeed us over royally the other night and this continues to fudge me off more than you can imagine, but the fact still remains that in order to win football matches you still need to score more goals than you concede.

We did not do that against Perth.

Right. Some good feedback.

How many of you looked at this as a fan and went ‘well yes of course they should intervene because...’ vs looking at this via the protocol and a referee/VAR position (forgive me, i’m trying to educate)

As I described, an incident where the AR gets a piece of it and indicates a foul via comms and that’s all. Referee gives it but has not seen it. 

The process must be the same for the sake of consistency otherwise as a fan, you have created that inconsistency.

I ask again, now you consider this, in both the case of the Lowry tackle and a punch to the face, what should happen next?

The key part of the process should be that a question is put to the AR by the referee and/or VAR. The question being something to the effect of "Did you see the foot/fist of player A connect with the shin/face of Player B" (which establishes whether the AR was in a position to determine the seriousness of the foul). If the answer from the AR is "Yes", then the VAR should not become involved as this would be "intervening in a subjective and technical decision which is not clearly and obviously wrong".

Put another way, how does the VAR know if a clear and obvious error has been made if the referee and/or AR don't communicate what they did or did not see in making their decision?

I would hope this is what did happen in the Fenton penalty appeal. The ref saw the pull on the arm of Fenton and decided this wasn't worthy of a penalty. The VAR indicated to the ref that he may want to review the incident. The ref explained his decision to the VAR and, as a result, no further action was taken as this would be "intervening in a subjective and technical decision" by the VAR (as opposed to the ref not seeing the pull on the arm).

The force is strong in you. Miyagi have a hope for you.

You are on the right track. The referee is the sole decision maker though so why would the VAR communicate with the AR because ARs can’t change/“make” decisions (and I am not sure they can communicate anyway)? I refer you to the commentary from the FFA folk whom say ‘the AR saw the foul and called it and the referee did not see it’ (or words to that effect)

So you know, the VAR can hear all comms between all on field officials. As far as I know, only the ref can hear the VAR. So the VAR is uniquely placed to hear all info but the entire onfield team is not placed to hear the VAR (as far as I know). Also VAR is push to talk so they have to push a button to communicate anything so it’s not open mic so the ref won’t hear idle chatter in his ear (rightly so)

This point you make here (Put another way, how does the VAR know if a clear and obvious error has been made if the referee and/or AR don't communicate what they did or did not see in making their decision?) is the single most important question and it duly relates to the above. So....

LEADING QUESTION: Knowing what the VAR can hear, and then what he can see, what would cause him to go ‘hold on a min’

HINT: I’ve half mentioned the answer above and the FFA gave it away.

Bonus chocolate fish if you can use quotes and who said what.