Planet Swans ArchivesWhat we do know though yesterday is that the decision not to allow Lamah’s goal was a belter of stinker proportions. The ball rebounded off goalkeeper and defender back to Lamah who put it into the net so there was no chance that the goal should even have come close to being disallowed.
And it’s probably hard to think about decisions that have gone our way to such an obvious extent to say that it has balanced out but I’m sure the statement normally relates to all decisions balance out not just the obviously wrong ones that cost you points.
The immediate call after bad decisions is generally for the use of video technolocy to be introduced into the game to kill the bad decisions once and for all. But could that really ever be an option? The goal-line one is simple and should be introduced as soon as possible as that shoudl be relatively simple to bring into the game and ensure that the did/didn’t it cross the line arguments end once and for all.
But if you were to introduce it for decisions like yesterday then you would possibly have to stop the game too often during the 90 minutes to check for decisions? And then what would happen is you get simple ones like yesterday where the original decision is overridden very quickly but you would also still have the decisions that can’t currently be clear even after 10 replays on a Sky TV programme so it wouldn’t clear them up and the game would become slow, disjointed and frankly lose some of it’s appeal.
Let’s be fair we all love a bad decision at times. It gives us things to debate over in the pub, it gives us subjects to talk about and it allows us to question the parentage of the officials. Of course it really does p*ss us off at times as well especially when they go against our team but it has been part and parcel of the game since it’s inception and I’m not sure it should ever change. Or is that if it did ever change it could be at the detriment to the game?
I think of all the comments made after yesterday’s game about the decision it was a Tweet from Adrian Tucker, our goalkeeping coach, that summed it up for me “Deserved a point. Showed the officials the video and he apologises for honest mistake by assistant” It was an honest mistake and it’s all well and good pundits saying ‘he couldn’t be 100% sure’ but I suspect he was it just so happened that he was wrong again.
If someone wants to keep a record of all wrong decisions made in our games next season then please do so and we can see if the decisions even themselves out but for now as much as it was irritating yesterday – and believe me when you are mid celebration at the Hawthorns the realisation it was disallowed is when you realise you are about the last to still be celebrating it’s really irritating – these things do happen and it has been part of football for as long as I can remember and that makes the game what it is to a certain extent.
And remember, if a linesman’s flag next Saturday pops a few more veins on the head of Arsene Wenger we’ll be applauding it as much as we criticsed it yesterday.
And that’s a good thing…!
