Re: Melbourne Storm
Reply #54 –
Regardless of the result, I think the NRL Final has highlighted the weak points of various video review systems.
They may improve the error rate but they will never be perfect, they just move the decision towards an ever finer line that is largely beyond human perception. For me this minuscule reduction in errors comes at a massive cost, the spectacle of the game is greatly degraded, we've already seen soccer go this way and it's becoming a joke with imaginary lines indicating a fingernail was offside. I fear we can see the AFL heading in the same direction!
Why would sports do this to itself?
The answer is simple, gambling revenue, gambling is big dollars from big sponsors who have big influence.
The video reviews are sold to the public as a need to get things right for the sake of the sport, but it's about wallets first with the sport as a spectacle coming in a distant second. I'd rather the old days, with a umpiring that is autocratic and authoritarian, and the games were not disrupted.
Even worse than the disruption of the video review is when officials retrospectively use uncorrelated footage to defend something that they apparently got wrong. Just come out and say we stuffed up and move on, don't go down the route of trying to sell us the idea that left was right, you're not Donald Trump and this isn't Kansas, just own your mistakes!