This season could go down in history as the season of 1984. Not the year but rather the George Orwell classic novel depicting a police state where your life is controlled and ran by Big Brother. Big Brother could quite easily become the new name for the Match Review Panel.

The whole issue of ‘did Perez dive' or ‘did Reddy foul him' has been done enough this week. To be completely honest so has the appeals and review process but I would like to take a bit of a look at the issue without getting too much into who is right and who is wrong. Just to make it clear though the CCM are right, Perez is the victim and the FFA/MRP are committing a gross miscarriage of justice by not having an appeal or judicial hearing for these issues.

Instead I would like to cast an eye over the technology implementation and take up of the A-League and the FFA. We all know that after the World Cup there was a huge public outcry from all footballing nations for the inclusion of technology into the football landscape.

In this trend the FFA proudly pointed to the processes for match reviews and the inclusion of the new regulations for the MRP they introduced after last season. However like many organisations who go out and acquire new tech and implement it into their organisation they have not done a full investigation of the ramifications the technology may cause.

This is not just an issue for sporting organisations, this is something that nearly all industries and companies have seen or suffered at some point. I know from firsthand experience what this can cause, I am an IT professional and a qualified project manager.

As such if there is a mistake to be made with a technology I have probably made it at some stage - and then hidden it very quickly so the boss does not find it.

In my experience the best practice for implementing a new technology goes something like "Tender, Review, Purchase, Implement, Review, Improve". However most organisations and I have also been guilty of doing an implementation more along the lines of "Saw a good idea, purchase, wonder what to do with this now, implement, wonder why it is not so good".

The second option seems to be what the FFA and MRP have done with video replay. They had a good idea to try to use the MRP to look at issues of diving. We all agree this is a great idea. They then went out and tried to implement this in some way even though the consultation with the players association advised a Natural Justice deficiency.

The FFA put the process and technology into place and then they sit back to reap the plaudits from the public when it all kicks into gear. The only problem is that real life is not always as cut and dried as the process engineering world would like. Sometimes things just are not black and white.

A review should have been done.

Now I know a number of people will be up in arms saying it is too early in the piece to have done a review. Well, no, this is not true. The MRP was used and active in the preseason this year. Between the preseason and the regular season, did the FFA perform a review? To be honest, I don't know but they should have if they did not. .

Maybe if the FFA had of had a review period planned for the end of the season and published this to the clubs then the Mariners may not have gone off and considered legal action as they did.

The process is not necessarily the only problem that exists in this situation now. IT professionals often run into problems with ‘expert users' who own a home computer and so they must obviously know all about IT. This is a bit like the armchair critic in sport I guess, just because we all have televisions and DVD players at home I would not assume that every person in Australia is an expert in video technology.

Did the FFA and the MRP get an expert in video technology and broadcast to sit on the MRP tasked with assisting the panel to understand the technology and vision? From the list of names and professions I have seen on the MRP, I did not see anyone who would qualify as a technology expert. What exactly are the skills that were put onto the MRP?

Barry Such - A Referees Coach and FFA employee

Simon Micallef - Former referee

Alan Davidson - Former Defender

Are the ex-referees, ex-players and administrators on the panel aware that the super slow motion replay they watch is much slower than the number of frames the Fox cameras capture? Are they also aware of the fact that the images they are watching on slow motion do not capture every single thing that happens, that between frames there is movement that may not be captured unless Fox were using those super high speed jobs the Myth Busters destroy with such gay abandon?

If a technology expert was sitting on the panel, I am sure he/she would have pointed out that the footage available was not conclusive of either a foul or a simulation. Could the panel also have consulted a biomechanical expert to get more information? However this does not seem to have happened in either case this week.

The last issue here is of course the lack of appeal or hearing when the players involved disagree with the panel findings. This has been widely discussed and as has been stated many times this week, it is hard to believe people convicted of the most heinous crimes against society are afforded an appeal of a committal yet a man who is accused of falling over when he was not touched is denied any right to face his accusers. But I do not want to go into this too much.
Instead I would like to ask a hypothetical question.

Just consider this situation.

You go into work on a Monday morning after a very successful Friday afternoon where you completed all your tasks. Your manager calls you over and hands you a letter telling you that you have been given a first and final warning for a breach of the Computer Usage policy for viewing inappropriate websites from your desk.

The evidence that the company owner has (which was gathered by his cousin who owns a computer and plays lots of games on Facebook) showed that there was a site in the browser history that looked kind of like it was pornography. He is pretty sure from the name of the site that you visited a website that was all about three couples having sex.

You look over the letter and think hang on a second  www.442.com.au is not about six people having sex it is the site where I get all my most informed information about Central Coast Mariners. My first reaction would be I have to tell the boss his amateur computer guy has got the evidence all wrong, but no he refuses to talk to you and you have no way to get rid of this letter of warning for the rest of your working life.

Thank god the boss installed that new internet monitoring software huh? This would be why every employer in Australia has a legal requirement to uphold a level of Natural Justice when dealing with employment discipline rather than just taking the IT experts word.

All I can say is I hope that FIFA are a little more diligent in the way that they implement goal line technology for the next World Cup.

I also hope like hell the FFA performs a review of the MRP process and the right of appeal is granted to all players.