Sunday 7 June 2009

Video Killed The Kauto Star


There are many things in this world that should not be trusted. Hitler and the Nazi party were one, a late-night kebab is another. Between these two lies a fair spectrum of distrust, whether it is the single iota of trust you can put in your iPod working for more than three hours, the trust given to a single pen to last an exam, or anything at all to do with low-cost airlines.
Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan’s mortifying comic masterpiece, provides the following anecdote. The hapless hero, wooing his hotel manager Susan, flaunts his skills in flattery, interrupting her singing voice to gush over the miraculous ability of her magnificent smile:
“Don’t sing, Susan! It sounds bad. Just stick to your smile. It’s a lovely smile. You know, you could work on the Titanic. You could say, ‘I’m terribly sorry, we’ve run out of lifejackets.’ And people wouldn’t mind. They’d say, ‘Thank you for the information, I’ll take my chances.’
“You’d make a very good Judas. Betray me and then kiss me.”
One thing you should never trust: a smile. I learned this the hard way…
It was this time last year, the week of the Cheltenham Festival, and in the process of making my weekly donation to William Hill before the Saturday’s football, I noticed that the shop was unusually, and overwhelmingly, busy. Behind the desk, sat a simply ravishing brunette with a smile that would make Cheryl Cole look distinctly average, so as I handed over my fiver bet on seven home wins, I felt compelled to act upon my most natural of urges: lust.
“Busy in here”, I stated with nonchalant rhetoric, leaning against the counter as if it were a jukebox and I was the Fonz.
“Yeah, they’re lining-up for the Gold Cup”, came her gorgeous response, which, to me - virtually a horse-racing virgin - could just as easily have meant a global response organized for this particular William Hill shop, to drink from the Holy Grail and behold the second coming of Christ, rather than a race of horses.
“Oh, of course!”, came my lied response, “Who’s the favourite?”.
“All the money is going on Kauto Star - he’s at evens - that’s where my money would go! Second favourite is Denman at nine to four.”
“Good odds”, I replied, knowing that even if she had just spoken Japanese to me that I would have given a similar answer with the same feigned nod of understanding. Doing the maths in my head, I knew that if I put £10 on the Kauto Star, not only would I have put my football coupon on for free, but I would also leave the place a fiver up! Plus, flashing the cash in front of this young filly was sure to seal the deal; the odds were getting better by the second!
I pulled a tener out of my wallet, and, taking our relationship to second base - not even considering the chance that the horse might not win - wrote ‘Kauto Star to win’ on the nearest slip, and presented it as if I was Romeo, she was Juliet, and the play went by a completely different format to Shakespeare’s original.
“Good luck!” she smiled back to me.
I’ve never trusted a smile since. Lazy horse.

A year on, and the pain is still ripe. I had put a lot on the line; placed my trust where I felt it was safe, and, three miles and two-and-a-half furlongs later, felt, in the same vein as Vince McMahon in the hey-day of the World Wrestling Federation, “screwed over”. It was an experience that left me with great sympathy for those players and teams done over by a poor refereeing decision, a bad call from an umpire, an outrageous goal-line decision, when evidence clearly shows otherwise.
Frequently in football, the call for the introduction of a video-referee is near brutal from the losing side on the back of a poor decision by match officials. The argument is, that with the incredible advances in technology over the past decade - advances which in themselves continue to develop - should all sports not have the biggest, most important, game-changing calls and decisions made either with the help of technology, or purely by technology alone? It is easy to say that the introduction of, for example, compulsory video referees in sport would absolutely change everything for the better. However, in removing the human element of officiating, do we de-humanise sport at its core, make it a different game today than that which has been played for the last hundred or so years, and essentially destroy the records of the past as the game changes to something unarguably different? It is unfair to say that sport, if we were to introduce essential technologies to our most loved games now, would be played on the same ‘field’ today than it was even ten years ago. The perfect example: would England have captured the football World Cup in 1966 had Goal Line Technology (GLT) correctly disallowed Geoff Hurst’s extra-time strike?
Although many of sport’s governing bodies are still fickle about bringing their games into the twenty-first century, sports such as rugby, cricket and tennis have to be praised for their acceptance of the benefits of new technology to their game, and the resulting integration of video referees and ‘Hawk-Eye’ technologies.
It is now commonplace within both codes of rugby, to find the match referee signal for the use of the video referee to analyse any play that may or may not have resulted in a try; a decision that is not entirely clear to the official himself. With television cameras dotted all around the stadium, the video referee will analyse replays of the debated try-scoring move, and, by studying all available angles, decide for the uncertain match referee whether or not the ball was, for example, touched down, held-up, knocked-on, or if the player was in or out of touch as the try was scored. Communicating through microphone and ear-piece, the video-referee will then confirm to the match referee if a try should or should not be awarded. A simple, effective and reliable way of refereeing that ensures that there can be no argument or ambiguity.
Cricket has progressed along the same lines, using a ‘third-umpire’ to study video replays and decide whether or not a batsman has been run-out, stumped, caught, or has managed to reach the boundary for a four or a six, whenever either of the two on-field umpires find the decision difficult to reach. Again, it is a simple method that eliminates ambiguity from the game and ensures a level playing field for all.
A technology that is a little more advanced yet incredibly accurate, is the ‘Hawk-Eye’. Developed in 2001, ‘Hawk-Eye’ is a computer system that is able to generate a three-dimensional image of a ball’s flight path, which in turn predicts the ball’s exact point of impact or continued line. It was initially used for the purpose of television (perhaps to provide fans and pundits something to argue over - a past-time that could easily fall near extinction if technology is available to exam and correct every aspect of each decision of any game…), but became integrated into the game of cricket soon after. The third-umpire can use ‘Hawk-Eye’ - with an umpire’s authority - to follow the path of the ball to examine whether it strikes the batsman’s leg before wicket, thus rendering him out.
The same ‘Hawk-Eye’ technology is used in tennis, where again it follows the line of the ball to decipher the validity of an in or out call, when the ball bounces near to or on the line. After years of negotiating, in March of last year it was decided that ‘Hawk-Eye’ could be used by players for a maximum of three unsuccessful challenges per set.
So why does football, our country’s biggest sport, not enlist the help of video referees and computerized systems like ‘Hawk-Eye’? The governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA, have never been overly enthusiastic about the prospect of introducing the video referee, arguing that it derives from the history of the game, slows the game down, and just purely is not football.
There are, of course, logical reasons against the introduction of video refereeing in football: when does it stop being used (i.e. can it be used to claim for a penalty, a corner, even a throw-in?); would it mean that every club would have to splash out, fitting their home grounds with X amount of cameras, a big screen and a booth for a video referee?
As good and as welcome the idea of introducing video refereeing to football is to irate supporters, at this stage it seems unlikely to happen soon. But what about other technologies, such as the ball-chip development that was introduced at the Club World Cup two years ago? Fitting each pair of goal-mouths throughout the whole country with the required sensors/laser beams would surely cost a few quid, so why not just consider it for the SPL and English Premiership alone? Surely the correctness and validity of decisions in the top tier of each Football Association would add strength and worth to the top leagues? Remember when we didn’t have under-soil heating…?
I suppose the final question to ask is simple: do we want every decision to be 100% correct, every time? Obviously, yes, but if we lose the indefiniteness of decisions made by the man in the middle, then what else goes with it? There will be no referee to shout at, no unsavory chants to heckle at the SFA, a disappearance of the injustice which fuels rivalry and the want for revenge, a lack of post-match debate in the pub, the feeling of what could have or should have been, and definitely no Real Radio Football Phone-In - everything the true essence of being a supporter is about!
Again though, when it is all done and dusted, we plead for honesty and faultlessness from he who is in charge. With rugby, every decision is now near on 100% correct every time, yet the passion is burning stronger than perhaps ever before.
For what it is worth - my £15 back from William Hill would be nice - I feel the trust we, as supporters, and athletes as professionals, instill in those who guide us through the game should be rewarded with undeterred accuracy. With so much hanging in the balance, especially with the money available in sport nowadays, it is a pure miscarriage of justice to award that which is not or deny that which is, when the knock-on effect could be massive.
So embrace the technology, I say! It could screw England at the next World Cup!
Published: March 2009, Strathclyde Telegraph

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