SFA shamed into half-hearted statement on Referee Operations
The SFA have been shamed into issuing a statement relating to VAR coverage of Motherwell’s match against Celtic on Wednesday night.
Shortly after a ‘goal’ from Jota had been disallowed a bizarre long distance image was used to justify the decision when all that it achieved was cause confusion and raise suspicion.
The main camera on the halfway line could have been used but it seems that VAR David Dickinson went on his own instinct to disallow the goal with no supporting evidence.
A statement on Thursday morning could have cleared the issue up, instead the SFA waited to react after a day of criticism.
This morning following leaks to The Sun and Daily Mail the SFA stated:
Referee Operations can confirm that during a VAR review at Motherwell v Celtic, the footage from the relevant 18-yard line camera did not capture an appropriate view of the incident.
While the broadcast footage was only able to show a wider camera angle for viewers, Hawk-Eye technology is designed to calibrate an accurate offside decision from either of the two 18-yard line camera positions, with the subsequent VAR review determining that the Celtic player had received the ball in an offside position.
We have provided feedback to the host broadcaster on the incident as part of our regular review of the system operation.
Tellingly there is no supporting image or video clip with the statement to justify the decision to disallow the goal. No explanation is given about the ‘subsequent VAR review’ to reveal why the camera on the halfway line wasn’t used.
Should Celtic publish the reply from the SFA over the Jota VAR decision?
As soon as Dickinson noticed that the camera wasn’t working steps should have been taken to resolve the issue rather than hope for the best then passing off a clearly inadequate image to justify the decision. The problem was resolved by the time that Daizen Maeda scored Celtic’s second goal with a VAR image shown from the camera that was out of use for Jota’s effort.
Dickinson is scheduled to referee tomorrow’s match between Kilmarnock and Hibs, David Munro will referee Celtic v Ross County with Ewan Anderson on VAR duty.