Another debatable point from Dan Ballard’s sending off — apart from the ‘hair tug law’ itself — was the intervention of VAR.
At that point in the match, Sunderland were leading 0-1, were in control and looking like we were going to cash in against the bottom and already relegated side in the table. The sending off changed all that and from then on in, it was a case of trying to hold on with what we had against a team with an extra man.
The referee had no intention of looking at the foul until he was
directed to do so by VAR, and he then had no choice but to follow the law as it’s laid down and to send Ballard off. It changed the course of the game without any doubt, and has added further fuel to the never-ending VAR debate.
If the fan polls across the footballing community are to be believed, most fans don’t like VAR or believe it brings anything to the game. The majority would like to see it scrapped, and vocal pundits such as Alan Shearer agree with them.
My own opinion is that I agree with all of this.
I’ve always hated VAR for, among other things, the disallowing of a plethora of goals because someone’s fingernail or nostril hair is offside. It’s the party pooper during the best moment of a game; the moment when a goal is scored and the ground erupts in the pure spontaneous celebration that nothing in life replicates.
We’ve seen that taken away from fans up and down the country and killed more effectively than by my other pet hate: goal celebration music blasting over a PA system. Thanks to VAR, fans have to sit and wait for anything up to three, six, seven or eight minutes while someone in a hut endlessly mulls over what are sometimes obvious decisions.
But the nemesis of fans which is VAR isn’t the complete villain of the piece despite the sending off at the weekend, and I’d go so far as to say that at Sunderland, we’ve not done too badly out of it this season.
You only have to cast your mind back to the Tottenham game when with the game poised at 0-0, the away side took the lead from a corner.
The referee gave the goal and was in no way going to change his mind despite the protests from the Sunderland players until he was instructed to review it by VAR.
If that goal had stood, Tottenham, then on a long winless streak and desperate to turn their fortunes around, would’ve had a different game plan. Could Sunderland have equalised? Maybe. Could we have gone on and won the match from a goal down? I’m not convinced about that one.
As much as I as anyone else would like to throw the whole VAR experiment into the nearest bin, it has to be given a grudging acknowledgement — a truth, if you like, by casting our minds back to the Wembley playoff final one year ago.
Already 0-1 down to Sheffield United’s 25th minute goal, they scored another just before the break which would’ve stood had VAR not intervened on our behalf and ruled it out. 0-2 would’ve been a very tall order for Régis Le Bris’ side, and probably too much to recover from.
Had if not been for that, we would’ve still been in the Championship this season, along with all the “What ifs?” of who would still be here and who wouldn’t have come at all.
VAR changed the game at the weekend but you have to say that we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy this season without it. Hate it, but it still has credit in the bank at Sunderland.
