Arsenal<\/a> game, spent two minutes 41 seconds poring over every angle of the footage, checking the possible foul, and potential penalties.<\/p>\nThat length of time made sense, as there were multiple incidents to check. <\/p>\n
Once at the monitor, referee Chris Kavanagh was there for one minute 15 seconds and watched 17 different replays. <\/p>\n
In total, the review lasted four minutes 11 seconds.<\/p>\n
It was markedly quicker at Fir Park, though there was only one thing to review.<\/p>\n
The Celtic game was stopped for one minute 25 seconds while the VAR, Andrew Dallas, carried out a penalty check.<\/p>\n
But once referee John Beaton went to the pitchside monitor, he was there for only 20 seconds and watched just two replays.<\/p>\n
Dallas also rocked-and-rolled the frames, presenting this as clear proof that the ball had hit the Motherwell midfielder’s hand.<\/p>\n
It was two minutes four seconds from the potential handball to the spot-kick being awarded – half the time of the contentious decision at the London Stadium.<\/p>\n
VARs in Scottish football are hindered by one key factor: resources.<\/p>\n
In England, a minimum of 28 cameras, though often more, are available to the VAR at each ground.<\/p>\n
But up in Scotland, most games have a minimum of just six cameras, going up to 12 for the fixtures selected for live television broadcast.<\/p>\n
That the VAR was only able to present one camera angle to the referee highlighted the limitations. Beaton was only shown what everybody at home had watched on television.<\/p>\n
It should be remembered that referees must have a level of trust that in the VAR, that when they get to the screen it is only because they have made a clear error.<\/p>\n
It is why, at all levels, there are only a handful of times each season that a referee sticks with their own decision. <\/p>\n
It is why the VAR is the real arbiter. <\/p>\n
So regardless of whether the ball does actually touch Nicholson’s hand, it was a bold move for the VAR to determine he had definitive evidence. <\/p>\n
“VAR was introduced to, in Fifa’s terminology, not to look for pebbles but look for boulders,” former Scottish Premiership referee Bobby Madden told 5 Live.<\/p>\n
“Last night isn’t a pebble, it is not even a grain of sand. It goes against the whole ethos of why VAR was introduced.”<\/p>\n
Perhaps it says a lot that fans found it necessary to create and share fake images on social media as supposed definitive proof. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were some clear differences in approach. Darren England, the VAR for the Arsenal game, spent two minutes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-670885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}