VAR must become part of football, says rugby ref Barnes

Rugby referee Wayne Barnes believes video technology has to become a part of football, but admitted that the sport is learning as it goes along with the introduction of VAR.

Barnes visited St George’s Park a few weeks ago to discuss video refereeing with the top football officials and last week spoke on a panel about athlete welfare at the 2018 Yahoo Sports Technology Awards in Camden.

A professional referee since 2005, Barnes has officiated at Rugby World Cups and in Premiership Rugby and Champions Cup finals and is using his experience of using a TMO in rugby to advise football on how it can best use technology.

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He said: “Football has started to go down that route where it can’t be right that if the ball is clearly out or if the player is clearly outside of the box and it’s given in, you just accept it as part of the game because there’s too much riding on it, on sport in general.

“So, that’s what football are developing at the moment and it’s about finding the right time to use it and the right amount of times to use it to make sure it doesn’t take too long, because what you don’t want to do is break up the tempo of the game.

“There’s nothing worse than sitting in a rugby match and seeing six TMOs which take five minutes each and all of a sudden you’re sitting there for two-and-a-half hours rather than 80 minutes.

“Football is a year into this, rugby are ten years into this so they are learning as they go along, but as a fan, as a coach, as a player, you talk to all of those people, they want the right decision, so it’s just about making sure that the process is right because VAR has to become part of the game.

“It’s going to be at the World Cup so it’s just about making sure the process is right and that’s why I was up at St George’s a couple of weeks ago discussing how we use it with the football referees in the Premiership and them sharing some ideas with us, because rugby hasn’t got it all right.

“Football is on that kind of journey, a journey of VAR.”

The STA Group started in 2013 with the Sports Technology Awards, and now spans a range of initiatives, including the STA-AP (Asia Pacific), the STA Start Ups, the STA TechTalks series and ENS Sports PR Ltd, as well as industry insights and networking events.

This year was the fifth cycle of the STAs, which has become an international mark of excellence, and enjoys ever-increasing global support from all facets of the international sports sector.

This year saw headline sponsorship from Yahoo Sport, as well as sponsors Sportradar and Switzerland for the STA Startups and TechTalks respectively.

Barnes has worked with cricket umpires and rugby league referees on getting the best out of technology, and is particularly keen on seeing technological advances play a bigger role in athlete welfare.

He is a strong advocate of the RFU’s trial with comparing saliva tests of players who may have been concussed with those who leave the field unscathed, in an effort to improve player safety.

Barnes said: “The doctors can see if there is any kind of alignment with the scores that they are getting around molecules and around the molecular structure of the spit.

“They decide whether they can say just from that spit test whether or not they are potentially concussed or not, so it’s a really exciting advancement, I think they are going to report on that at the end of the year starting 2019.”

If there is one thing Barnes is sure of, it’s that referees across all sports welcome any technological advancement that can help them reach the correct decision, insisting that the last thing they want is controversy.

He said: “Every referee in every sport doesn’t want to be spoken about afterwards.

“If you can get any piece of technology to help you to do that then it’s better for us as referees.”

This year was the fifth cycle of the STAs, which enjoys ever-increasing global support from all facets of the international sports sector. For more information about the Sports Technology Awards, visit www.sportstechnologyawards.com