Have the SFA lied to Celtic again?
In Celtic’s recent match at Fir Park, Kyogo Furuhashi played a killer though ball to Jota in the 59th minute. The Portuguese ran on before chipping Liam Kelly in the Motherwell goal. It was a thing of beauty. The linesman raised his flag upon the goal being scored, and the usual check occurred as happens with all goals now under Video Assistant Referee (VAR) protocols. After just over one minute, David Dickinson (the VAR) advised Willie Collum, the on-field whistler, to disallow the goal for offside. Remember, VAR is a person operating a system, not a piece of technology independent of human thought. Although disappointing, it was not a surprise decision as in real time it had looked an incredibly tight call.
VAR Evidence
What initially aroused some concern from the Celtic support was that no “standard” image was produced by the broadcaster showing the definitive parallel lines indicating clearly the nature of the offside. What does that mean? Here is an example of Heart of Midlothian’s second goal against Celtic from Lawrence Shankland, illustrating perfectly how the technology and VAR are to operate correctly:
You can clearly see there are two lines indicating the furthest most point of the body of the attacker (a part of the body he can score with) in green versus that of the last defender in blue (or in this case the ball as the eventual scorer is behind it). The VAR uses the technology (a camera plus the Hawkeye system) to position the lines and make a HUMAN decision as to whether an offside offence has occurred. In the Motherwell versus Celtic match, for Jota’s “goal”, we got this:
As you can see there are no clear green or blue lines and no indication of the distance between them. To the naked eye, it looks a very tight call. So far as we know, this image, used in the broadcast available on Celtic TV and shown by Sportscene, was the image used by the Dickinson to make the human decision to definitively tell Collum he should disallow the goal. It transpired that the cameras available at the ground were all operating correctly but that the crucial 18-yard line camera was not facing the action as Furuhashi passed to Jota, but instead trained on the dugout area. Alan Burrows, the Motherwell Chief Executive Officer (CEO) took to Twitter to confirm:
He confirmed an “alternative angle” was used resulting in the image above. As Steven Thompson said on BBC Scotland’s Sportscene that night (at 15:10):
“That’s a very difficult angle to look at and definitively say off or on.”
Given the available evidence, Celtic are reported to have asked the SFA for clarification on the making of this decision.
SFA Statement
Where this story really begins is with the statement issued by the SFA on Friday 11th November, two days after the game. in response to Celtic's query.
It will be no surprise to Henry McLeish who completed a comprehensive report on the state of Scottish football in 2010 that the statement issued by the SFA is amateurish in extreme. A competent Public Relations expert would surely blush – throwing a broadcasting partner under the proverbial bus whilst failing to take ANY responsibility for delivery of VAR for which THEY are the accountable party. The camera operators are responsible for the operation of cameras, the SFA are accountable for the end-to-end delivery of the VAR service of which cameras are one part. More importantly, the statement confirmed two important facts.
That the decision was made within the VAR room – “the subsequent VAR review determining that the Celtic player had received the ball in an offside position”. Dickinson decided it was an offside, not Collum.
That despite the camera that should have been used to make the decision being unavailable (trained on the dugout on “Ange-watch” no doubt), the “calibrated” Hawkeye technology nevertheless allowed a decision to be made.
Worryingly, the statement also revealed an ignorance of the laws of football, a stunning achievement in a statement from the governing body accountable for refereeing standards:
“the subsequent VAR review determining that the Celtic player had received the ball in an offside position”.
A player is deemed offside at the moment the ball is passed to him/her, not at the point at which (s)he receives the ball. Did Dickinson make the decision based on where Jota was relative to the last defender when he received the ball? Does he not know the offside law? Surely not. It is very difficult then to untangle such a woeful, lazy and inaccurate attempt at communication. But it was a very revealing statement, but not in the way the author surely intended.
How Should It Work?
Before we get into how the decision making was handled to arrive at the offside call, and the implications of the subsequent SFA statement, a brief consideration of what should have happened. The SFA statement infers that the Hawkeye system is so sophisticated, it can arrive at a decision based on either 18-yard line camera:
“Hawk-Eye technology is designed to calibrate an accurate offside decision from either of the two 18-yard line camera positions”
“Calibrate an accurate offside decision” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The reality is more prosaic and less sci-fi. An offside decision is the harmony of four factors:
A camera providing a visual image of an event;
Hawkeye technology establishing the positioning of objects;
A human operator creates indicative lines based on the positioning of said objects (ball and players) to assist a decision and to inform the broadcaster and public; and
A human VAR makes a definitive decision based on the compiled evidence.
The English Premier League have a helpful guide here. Always remember, when it says “VAR” they are talking about a person not a machine. The bottom line is that Hawkeye on its own cannot determine offside as the SFA statement infers, it requires an ultimate human arbiter (the VAR). Dickinson decided definitively on the offside decision based on the image presented above, unless there is another image they have not yet shared.
What Should Dickinson Have Done?
Given the circumstances - a failed camera system and imperfect evidence available - what should Dickinson as VAR have done? I believe he had three options in this situation.
Do Nothing
This is always an option in any risk management scenario, but what does it mean in this context? As James McFadden speculates on the Sportscene analysis linked to above, given the linesman put his flag up maybe they reverted to the original on-field call? If I was in Dickinson’s position, the camera crucial to this decision has failed, the image available is inconclusive, I would have said to Collum:
“Willie, we’ve had an issue with the tech. We cannot make a definitive call. My advice is to go with what you guys on the field think.”
To me, this is honest (acknowledges there were issues limiting their ability to perform their duties), practical and fair. I would not have a problem with this and whilst the technical glitch is irksome, put it down to “teething problems”, learn the lessons, say sorry and on we go. It is also sensible – the new system has failed; the backup option is the old system – referee and linesman decide. The result would likely have been to disallow the goal and fair enough, I doubt many would have quibbled with this outcome. In PR terms it was an easy “out”. We know from the SFA statement that this is not what happened. The statement is very clear. The VAR (Dickinson) determined Jota was offside (when he received the ball - lol).
Follow Procedures
If you cannot do the “right” thing (in this case - be honest), do what is says in the manual. For the 2021/22 season, the English Premier League adjusted their guidance to VARs on judging offsides to bring the EPL in line with the UEFA Champions League and protocols used at Euro 2020. Mike Riley describes the changes in this Sky Sports article. ESPN reported the changes affecting offside in more detail here. Encouragingly, the SFA appears to have picked up on the EPL learnings and adopted the following protocols for judging offside from the get-go – this from their own guidance:
The crucial part is “if the two lines (blue and green as above) do overlap, the on-field decision (to flag offside) will be overturned, and the goal will stand”. What that means in reality is that the benefit of any doubt should be given to the attacking side. That means, the question in the VAR’s mind should be “can I confirm that the player if offside”? Can you confirm Jota is offside from this image?
I asked an expert, the Yorkshire Whistler (a Sheffield Wednesday supporting professional referee from Yorkshire), and he could not confirm that Jota was offside based on this image. When I presented the factual evidence to him without comment (the image used by VAR, the live game footage and the SFA guidance on offsides), his response was:
“Sticking purely to my remit of analysing what evidence is available and presented to decide on the outcome of on field refereeing decisions made, I would have to say the Celtic player is on the wrong end of a marginal decision.
To my eyes, he looks level with the defender as the pass is played and I would have applied the ‘benefit of doubt’ in favour of the attacker, as per the SFAs own guidelines you kindly attached.”
A verifiably neutral referee, in this instance, would have allowed the goal to stand. Dickinson chose not to follow the SFA guidelines.
Offside Decision
The third option is the path Dickinson chose. Eschewing doing the right thing (“we don’t know, you decide Willie”) and the correct thing by the book (benefit of the doubt to the attacker if you cannot establish definitively an offside decision) he told Collum it was definitively offside and to disallow the goal. The SFA statement confirms this.
What Next?
Which brings us back to the SFA statement, which is the real story. It doesn’t really matter whether Jota was or was not in fact onside. What matters is that it appears the governing body may once again be misleading Celtic and the entire Scottish football community. The SFA are being less than clear as to how the technology supporting VAR is used. They are supporting a decision that is supposed to be definitive but based on all the available evidence, could not possibly be so and indeed the decision-making process did not appear to follow the SFA guidelines. Oh, and they are ignorant regarding the offside laws of football. The likes of Gordon Parks in the Sunday Mail Scotland will no doubt cry “moon howling paranoia”. But how can that be so when there is a clear and irrefutable pattern of deceit from the SFA in their dealings with Celtic?
The late Jim Farry (SFA CEO) lied to Celtic about Jorge Cadete’s delayed registration;
Hugh Dallas (Head of Refereeing Development) and Dougie McDonald lied to Neil Lennon and Celtic regarding the withdrawal of a penalty to Celtic in a game against Dundee United that cost a young linesman his career;
The SFA through President Campbell Ogilvie were aware of the existence and operation of EBTs at Rangers and did nothing;
The SFA were aware Rangers had overdue tax payables to HMRC and were not eligible for a UEFA license in the 2011/12 season but issued one anyway.
This is all a matter of public record. The most senior officials in Scottish football administration have mislead Celtic for decades. And these are only the events we know about. All this means a lack of trust. So, when a seemingly trivial incident like an offside occurs, and the SFA feel moved to issue a statement that raises more questions than it answers, many are moved to doubt whether they are being told the truth by the governing body. If there is a definitive image showing Jota was offside, this can be quickly put to bed. If there are protocols that support the decision-making process used here, issue it. Otherwise, doubt remains that Celtic have been lied too again. And that is a problem. Over to you, Michael Nicholson.
Acknowledgement is due to David (@djquinn) for helping me understand the VAR processes and procedures and his excellent thread summarises this.