Time for our governing bodies to put an end to this

Technology is brilliant, I can communicate to any of my friends all over the world with my phone. All technology is, is a tool to make our lives easier – although sometimes it inadvertently makes it harder – If you think I am wrong, go live in a cave for a week and hunt your dinner with a spear, or go without the Internet or electricity for a week, you will see that technology generally makes our lives better.

With this fact established, it makes me worry about what exactly FIFA and the FA are up to. They seem to have no problem accepting the billions of pounds that TV revenue brings in, or social media that they use so frequently, or the goal line technology that after a billion years of talking about has finally come in. It would seem that the old men that run the joint are incompetent when it comes to either change or what the public want, or both.

The biggest problem facing the game is diving. I sometimes forget what I am watching, football or a swim meet. It drives me mad when players decide to cheat and go to ground to get a penalty. It should be said that the word cheat is accurate, because that’s what it is. Cheating is classified as gaining a reward from dishonest means, and that is what diving is, cheating.

The captain of a team should be able to challenge the referee for a red card or a penalty. Referees do have a hard job, I have done it, it is difficult and if you make a mistake, people want your blood. With a billion cameras at games it makes sense that we should have a second referee waiting to be called so the correct decision can be made for something as big as a penalty. Penalties and red cards cost you matches, they are meant to be only for serious infringements and should the player take out a player making then a ref should do his job and point to the spot. But if he dives and the ref is conned by this, then the captain should be allowed to challenge the call via a video referee – obviously we’d have to come up with a rule where you have, say, three calls per match.

In the mid 90’s cricket decided that it was to hard to judge a run out, so they used technology via a third umpire to make more accurate calls. Now the system worked brilliantly, to undo the system would be like getting rid of all smart phones and replacing them with a Nokia 5110. It’s now almost 20 years since cricket saw that technology can help assist the referee make more accurate calls, so they made the change, why can’t we; almost every sport in the world has gotten with the times and used some type of video review system, we are lagging behind.

Will things change, no; we have an out of touch bunch running our sport who don’t care about the fans. People don’t want to watch a player dive they want to see him use his skill and pace, to score a goal, not fall over in the box. When you consider the price fans of our sport pay to go to games and watch the games, the referee should have all the technology to make the correct call. At the end of the day you can agree with me or disagree, but why can we not stamp out this cheating that is going on in the game.

COYI