VAR positive move for Scottish football
Tuesday, 19th Apr 2022John Hughes:- “Anything that helps Scottish football and helps the referees is good.
At an SPFL meeting on Tuesday the proposal to introduce VAR technology to the top flight of Scottish football received the necessary 75% votes in the cinch Premiership, the cinch Championship, and cinch Leagues 1 and 2.
The SPFL chose not to be an early adopter of VAR technology to allow time for teething issues to be ironed out by those leagues who adopted VAR early. Now a scheduled implementation is planned for December 2022.
The SPFL also plans to use VAR in the Premier Sports Cup semi-finals and finals in January and February of next year, with further discussions planned regarding its use during earlier rounds in future seasons.
Dunfermline manager John Hughes is firmly behind the Hawkeye Innovations System, which is already in use at many leagues worldwide, including the English Premier League. He commented on the decision:-
“Anything that helps Scottish football is positive. We’re always a step behind English football, probably because of the finances down there but anything that helps Scottish football and helps the referees is good. But, no matter what, it’s still down to a human decision, it’s a referee in there looking at it and making a decision.”
John felt that had VAR been available at East End Park last Saturday the decision for Coll Donaldson’s challenge on Ayr United striker Tomi Adeloye would not have resulted in Lee Bullen’s side being awarded the 35th minute penalty from which Aaron Muirhead put them one up:-
“I don’t think we would have had a penalty given against us. I think there was contact but the boy made a meal of it and the referee got to the penalty very, very quickly. It was a 50-50 dubious decision, for me but I love it and I’m a great supporter of everything in Scottish football. It’s about time and if it helps everybody and helps the game, then I’m all for it.”
John Hughes agreed with the view of SPFL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster who was quoted saying:-
“I believe this was the right decision and that VAR will help referees to ensure tight decisions are more often the right ones and will support a higher standard and more consistent level of decision-making.
“Scottish referees are fully on-board with this innovation and have been overwhelmingly supportive about the introduction of VAR during our consultation process with our partners at the Scottish FA.”
Looking ahead to this weekend’s crucial away match against Partick Thistle John Hughes gave a brief update:-
“We have to stick to our philosophy and try to play our game and take the game to them. We started preparing the game this morning and had a look at one or two things.
“They’ll rest up on Wednesday and then we do most of our work on Thursday. We’ll see how they go on Thursday since we’ve got one or two wee knocks. We’ll not be far away from what we’ve been going with, that’s for sure.”
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