Sydney FC vs Melbourne Victory – the Big Blue – in front of a packed Allianz Arena for the 2017/18 A-League Final. It’s ticking into the final minute of extra time, with scores locked in a tense stalemate. Suddenly Leroy George picks the ball up on the break, nutmegs Alex Wilkinson and feeds a perfect pass to Besart Berisha, who’s torn down in the box by a venomous Jordy Buijs sliding tackle. 

The crowd are in uproar, the deafening volume reaches fever pitch as the walls of the Allianz begin to shake. But then, there’s silence. The referee doesn’t point to the spot, nor does he figure to play on. Instead, he makes a box with his hands.

Three minutes tick by, then four, as VAR – the experts in the truck – huddle around a darkened room, nervously converging over extended replays and misleading angles, until eventually a penalty is awarded. Berisha converts, or maybe he doesn’t, but there’s muted pandemonium. You can hear someone coughing in Row Z. The surprise and passion of the moment’s gone, the final ends, and as weary fans trundle back to their cars, they wonders how modern football has come to this.

It's a dim view of the A-League's future, but before we can predict where the VAR will take us, we should look back at where it's come from.

The past

The first official tournament to feature VAR technology was the 2016 Club World Cup – FIFA’s preferred laboratory – but it took until that tournament’s semi-finals for a match changing incident.

The A-League had already thrown their hands up for VAR by this point. We were going to become one of the first professional leagues in the world to trial the new technology, so as the first video referee penalty was given, FFA was nervously watching the fallout.

It was Hungarian match official Viktor Kassai who made made history in Kashima Antlers’ semi-final against Atletico Nacional. Originally, Kassai had failed to spot a push on Kashima’s Daigo Nishi in the box, yet almost two minutes went by before he referred the challenge to his team of assistants.

But it wasn’t a clear-cut decision, and time slowly ticked by before the penalty was awarded. There wasn’t rapturous cheering or Japanese elation, instead, there was an awkward pause as fans tried to work out what had just happened. As Shoma Doi scored the goal that eventually took Antlers’ to face Real Madrid, the outcome was clear.

If this technology was going to be implemented, there were still some mountainous kinks to be ironed out. Yet a year later, last night, in Sydney’s 2-0 drubbing of Perth Glory, the same problems reared their ugly head.