TV refs/ the very definition of justice?

In his back page essay in today’s Observer (web version here) Andrew Anthony uses his visit to the NFL’s Gameday Central Studio in New York to argue for the greater use of technology in football.  I’ll be looking at, and agreeing with much of, what he says but also seeing what lessons this might have for wider society and vice versa.

Tennis players have an unlimited right to challenge decisions that can be reviewed by the technology but once they get three wrong in a set they can make no more challenges - imagine losing the right to appeal in Cricket or real life!

In the NFL, Anthony tells us, coaches have the right to make two challenges a game (three if they get both right) about refereeing calls (as long as it’s not a scoring play or a turnover), which are then sent to review and the replay official subjects every scoring play and turnover to review.

He mentions that on his arrival the most played video was of an NFL star, the CCTV footage of Ray Rice beating his fiancee.  He contrasts ‘the forensic analysis’ of NFL games with ‘almost criminally lenient’ punishment of Rice.  Here I only note the deployment of criminological/criminal justice metaphors and the part played by CCTV/video ‘surveillance’ in all such cases to concentrate on the justice and technology issues.

He notes we are used to analysis of soccer by TV pundits of FIFA’s foot-dragging on the issue of the use of technology and sets out the four arguments that have traditionally been employed against using technology in soccer are:

a) it would slow the game down; b) it would undermine the position of the referee; c) it would drive a wedge between the professional and amateur game; d) it would remove the element of human fallibility that is a key talking point.

He seeks to rebut all in quick order but let’s unpick them.  First the charge of slowing the game down.  He notes players feigning injury to which we might add really being injured (and note proposals in Rugby Union for TMOs to judge the offenders punishment from the victim’s reaction make some fear this will lead to soccer-style ‘simulation).  Secondly he sees this as adding suspense.  He doesn’t use the term ‘gamification’ or cite games theory but clearly these will be issues (see here for analysis of strategies for the use of challenges in tennis).  Athletes have in the past been accused of using the old false start rules to unsettle their opponents; though it too might add suspense.  It is said that the dictates of TV had something to do with the change from each runner being allowed one false start to each race being allowed one, and the NFL’s intimate embrace with broadcasters and advertisers indicates the utility of slowing the game down.  Elsewhere in the article he acknowledges the very different tempos of association and american football which means that the technology cannot be imported wholesale - or indeed human based judgement and punishment systems.

He rightly argues that TV - those pundits and everyone in the pub - is now used to show that the referee is wrong so why not use it to show when they are right.  This chimes some of the arguments about CCTV and surveillance more generally - and what of all those dressing room and bench cams now?  Might we relate some of the arguments about the trend towards body-mounted cameras for the police with their use by rugby and ice-hockey referees.  Here’s former Rugby Union star and solicitor Brian Moore on the subject, though he reviews it more as a viewer .

He is again right about the void that exists between levels in the game and might have mentioned that this existed long before the introduction of technology.  Thus ‘amateur’ tennis players still have to rely on the honesty of their opponents but the professionals had an army of linespeople, referees and Umpire long before the arrival of Hawkeye.  Indeed, given the ubiquity and growing cheapness of technology might an App be developed that set all the players phones to police the game?

Finally the issue of the ‘talking point’.  Whilst sport might once have been undertaken for social or cultural reasons much sport now occurs in front of and specifically for the media.  What Anthony does not mention in his article is that Dean Blandino the NFL’s ‘vice-president of officiating’ ‘talks’ through controversial points of ‘law’ each week in a video.  Clearly something for soccer and justice more generally to consider?

Anthony’s article is headlined: ‘Decisions made from on high and far away’ to note that the next NFL match at Wembley will ultimately be ‘meta-refereed’ from New York (how far is it to San Francisco?).  He is discussing technology and sport but my argument is that there are crossovers not only between sports as he argues but also into and from ‘real’ life.  Might we see the substantive, if not yet formal, downgrading of refs in all sports as bringing sport more in line with life.  In this argument referees become more police officers than the Judge Dredd position they once held of being judge and jury.  This removes, in part, ‘justice’ from the hurly-burly of the field to a sufficient height and distance.  Whether that is to the cool of the court or the heat of the studio is another matter.

Olympic Claims

In Criminal Justice Matters No 88 (June 2012) ‘(In)security and the re-ordered Olympic city’ Pete Fussey explored issues around Olympic-related security and insecurity in advance of the Games.  Writing between the Games and the Paralympics I hope to assess some of those same issues.

First though some ‘conflict-of-interests’ confessions.  I was the external examiner on Peter’s PhD on CCTV and am very pleased to see the extent to which he has been able expand upon that work.  Also I’m a sports fan and have spent much of the past few weeks watching - live and recorded - the Olympics.  I agree with much that Peter says though I will be picking away at some aspects.  But, I’m not going to assert an ‘I-was-there’ standpointism where my experience of attending trumps his prospective theoretical position.  I went to the Olympic Park 6 times (3 Athletics, 1 Women’s Hockey, 1 Men’s Water Polo, 1 Women’s Basketball and 1 Track Cycling after another event) and the Lea Valley White Water Centre for Canoe Slalom.

Fussey picks out ‘a number of specific strategies [which] are consistently applied’: Militarisation, Privatisation, Technology and Surveillance, Physical Design and Behavioural regulation.  Whilst all might have been expected from his studies of other mega-events but the first two had a particular inconsistency in their application that might not have been anticipated.

Leading up to the Games much was made of the ‘missiles on rooftops’ but the experience of imilitarisation was in the form of actual serving members of the armed forces in the wake of the G4S security shortfall.  This even lead some commentators to eulogise them.  I can vouch for their friendly efficiency (and, like the policing of the torch relay a massive PR coup for them).  So actual militarisation trumped privatisation to the extent that 2 Govt Ministers were said to have had second thoughts about the limits of privatisation.  We shall see.

The technology and surveillance was less obvious but behind all such friendliness we find that Disney are using military strength face-recognition.  And again the physical and behavioural issues remind us of Disney.  Not only did the Olympic Park remind me of Disney but so did people’s appreciation of it.  But most had not read Clifford D. Shearing and Phillip C. Stenning’s ‘From the Panopticon to Disney World: the Development of Discipline’.  More hopeful though, are Warren’s conclusions in ‘Popular Cultural Practices in the “Postmodern City”’ that even:

Disneyland, demonstrates that contemporary urban landscapes are complicated and contradictory sites that hegemonically embed both dominant cultural and economic relations and creative resistance to them.

My derives around Stratford attempted some resistance, as does this.  But, and scandalously under-reported save on Twitter, were some more active complaints.  Thus Femen demonstrated outside City Hall against the inclusion of Islamic countries at the Olympics.  Yet I joined in the cheers for a Saudi and Palestinian woman athlete sporting ‘racing Hijabs’.

There is a dreadful irony in the success of the cycling team and the kettling of cycle born protestors on the night of the Opening Ceremony.  And further ironies in the on-screen lauding of the protests of Tommie Smith and John Carlos.  Past protests - on the right side - are seen to be acceptable.

But perhaps the best news is an unexpected Olympic legacy, of life imitating art as the suffragettes from the opening ceremony discover their feminism.

Like CCTV goal line technology won't work

The Sun today, in a sport page headline, urged us to forget goal line technology.  Perhaps because we had won.  But in a more considered article had this to say:

The ball looped towards goal and, while John Terry made an acrobatic clearance, replays showed the ball was OVER the line.

There were three officials watching it, the linesman, the official by the goal and ref Viktor Kassai but none of them spotted it.

What is the point of that bloke behind the goal-line? He was only five yards away and still he did not notice the ball was in.

Video technology cannot come soon enough.

At least it was some justice for England having had that Frank Lampard effort wrongly disallowed at the 2010 World Cup against Germany.

Let's start with that last point to dismiss it.  'Justice' is not the same as some hazy understanding of Hindu and Buddhist ideas of 'karma'.


The recent clamour for goal line technology reminds me of the demands for CCTV and the erroneous belief that it would 'work' (see my demolition here, based on the Home Office's own untrumpeted work).


I am not opposed to deploying technology; indeed, hugely enjoy the 'gaming' aspect of challenges in Tennis and Cricket using 'Hawkeye'.  Similarly, one of CCTV's main functions is to provide entertainment or tragic memorial on Crimewatch.


Whether we need it is another matter.  Fifth and sixth officials, like real life police officers, can do more than a technology but seem not to have in this case.  Moreover, television was quickly able to show the goal without any additional technology.  It has always shown all the fouls and diving without much sign of that being justly dealt with.


So lets fit the technology and congratulate ourselves we have resolved the issue.  And then start the argument that the player was offside earlier or should not have been on the pitch because of an earlier unpunished foul.  Or, even should not have been playing in the first place because of earlier infractions or that they were not properly qualified.