RateTheRef

Dale Johnson has stated that the independent panel which reviews all refereeing decisions felt that a penalty would have been the better decision but did not regard it as a clear and obvious error not to give one so VAR right not to intervene. I believe the panel judged the handball appeal in the reverse fixture to be a clear and obvious error.

I was going to ponder on the recent Andre Marriner Leicester V Chelsea thread if the authorities would set up VAR differently if introducing it now. I can understand why they wanted to limit its use originally as it was such a big change and wanted to try and protect the authority of the on-field referee.

But I think if you were starting from scratch now you might well scale back the Clear and Obvious concept. It feels it's often used as a reason to justify not getting involved even if most people feel a different decision would have been by far the better outcome and the referee themselves might well feel this when watching the incident back post-match. I'm not convinced this increases the authority of the on-field referee.

I think the referee maintains much more credibility in something like Rugby where they are always actively involved in the decision making process. As such, I do wonder if the barrier for the referee being able to view the video replay should be lower, so it becomes more of a natural part of the process rather than something that feels a bit more on the sideline. I know there's the risk of it being overused but on the other hand you might get more efficient decision making if the referee can view the incident quickly as opposed to a VAR taking 3 minutes initially to decide if it constitutes clear and obvious.

I don't think that anything significant is going to change with VAR in the short term realistically given they've been training people up on this model for the last 6 years or so.