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.

 

The present

Bobo had been awarded a penalty for a handball on Joseph Mills – he’d already missed a spot kick earlier in the match – but instead of coolly redeeming himself to the Sky Blue faithful, he stood anxiously for almost four minutes, awaiting a decision that had already been made, to be reaffirmed by the referee who had originally made it.

VAR caused the delay, but it didn’t make the decision. Instead, after a lengthy referral, it asked Shaun Evans to take another look. Which he did, before re-awarding the penalty.

Glory coach Kenny Lowe was clear in his criticism of the technology.

“At the end of the day they [Sydney] deserve the win, but we have to sort that [VAR] out. It’s making a mockery of the game. Let’s get it done and dusted,” Lowe said.

“If the ref is going to make a decision, let him make a decision.”

One of the key positives to VAR technology is the pressure it takes off referees. Having a fall-back for near-impossible decisions allows a referee to avoid some of the unfair, and very personal criticism that’s dished out on a regular basis.

The other, more questionable positive is its effect on the players. There’s the old adage that football is a game of fine margins, and careers have been made or lost over a referee’s whistle.

If referee decisions really can make or break a player’s career, then it’s very tempting to do everything in our power to make those calls accurate. But there are two sides to every story.

Say Bobo had missed that penalty last night, succumbing to the increased pressure of minutes standing there, thinking about how he’s going to take it.

That would have been two penalties missed in one game. It’s fair to assume that in a team full of proven penalty-takers – Wilkshire, Mierzejewski, Brosque – that Bobo wouldn’t have taken the next one.

Losing penalty duties could easily reduce a striker’s goal tally by five or six over the course of a season, which could then cost him his job. The pendulum swings both ways.

But this is all speculation, and there are far less hypothetical issues to the VAR.

As controversial as refereeing decisions can be, it’s unlikely that a poor call does more damage to Australian football than regular, lengthy stoppages.

The A-League is ad-break free during play, an underestimated point of significance in the ongoing struggle over the saturated Aussie sporting market.

Flowing football allows for an immersive, engaging spectacle when compared to the NRL and AFL, and it’s a cohesive argument against the idea that football is the slower-paced, less exciting contest.

Timewasting is already a blight on the modern game. But if penalising minute-long goal kicks and throw ins stays in the too-hard-basket, then any other process that delays the match for more than 10 or 20 seconds should be looked at with grim suspicion.

Sydney coach Graham Arnold was more diplomatic in his review of the VAR following the match, but hardly optimistic.

“It’s what the VAR is here for; to try and make those correct decisions and make it a clear decision,” Arnold said.

“Of course it’s a bit frustrating for the time it took, but that’s what it’s here for and people have to get used to it.”

The future

But do we have to get used to it?

VAR is still a work in progress. If FFA are going to stick with it, at the risk of alienating fans, then at the very least it will require improvement.

Most importantly, if the VAR is here to stay, then it has to have the confidence to make a decision itself. In the case of Joseph Mills, after delaying the match substantially, Evans ended up making the call anyway, by peering in at a pitch-side screen with a sock over it to stop it getting rained on.

That is the definition of ridiculous, and it shouldn’t continue to happen.

The time it takes for the VAR to review calls is a separate issue. VAR isn’t a natural extension of goal-line technology, where it’s a clear-cut matter of an instant review; VAR rulings deal with highly complicated, subjective incidents that require deliberation, and above all, the VAR has to adjudicate correctly.

Demanding that the assistant referees speed up their decisions, when it can take two minutes just to refer the call, may not solve the problem. Likewise, any changes that compromise the accuracy of the VAR decision remove the point – it’s not as if the head referee can’t make a decent judgment call at the time.

You could forgive FFA for feeling hard done by among all of this. The fans were constantly complaining about the standard of refereeing, so they brought in a system to take the pressure off referees, and give the fans what they were demanding – correct decisions.

Now the fans complain about the length of time it takes, and perhaps this is a lesson for all sport’s governing bodies. Fans like complaining. Get used to it.

But most of all, when considering advancements to the game, be ready to make mistakes and admit when technology is more of a hindrance then a help.

Improving football is about respecting the 90 minutes, not disrupting it.