Football Attendances: VAR

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[David Linden]

He and I are very good friends but, unusually, on this point I disagree with him. I tend to take the position of the hon. Member for Chesterfield of being quite keen to see the back of VAR altogether, but I appreciate that my hon. Friend takes a slightly different view.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. I have always been a big fan of video refereeing coming into football, but VAR is doing its level best to dissuade me of that support. I played rugby and am a big follower of American football. Lots of sports have used video evidence and it has worked. In the likes of cricket, the process is followed in live time. The issue is the transparency of the process, and the fact that fans are not involved. Does he agree that if changes were made to VAR, and if it followed other sports, it could be a success?

[David Linden]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who reminds us of his time playing rugby. He is far too modest to tell the House that he was actually a very good rugby player but had to retire due to injury. He does not talk about that very often. I once again find myself in a situation in which I must say that, on this issue, I speak personally—there is probably no SNP policy on VAR, but I need to be slightly careful not to over-egg the pudding.

I want to come on to the interpretation of the handball rule.

[Gavin Newlands]

As the SNP spokesperson for sport at Westminster, I believe I have just set the policy, and that my hon. Friend is in fact going against party policy.

[David Linden]

I am glad that my hon. Friend put that on the record. That point is well made.

Coming back to the interpretation of the handball rule, the rules around handball have been reviewed and changed in recent years, which in many respects accounts for some of the stranglehold on the game. A few weeks ago, alongside my hon. Friends here and my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), I watched the Hearts-Hibs game. There was a whole bit of commentary towards the end of the game that focused on whether Hearts had handled the ball. What actually happened was that a player was going down for a slide tackle to try to get the ball and put his hand down behind him to try to break his fall, and the ball came off his arm. Clearly, that was not a deliberate handball, but depending on their interpretation of the rules, some might say it was, so we need to review the handball rules. I appreciate that that decision is not necessarily within the gift of the Minister, although one day he might be that powerful; he can certainly aspire to that.

I also want to see a review of the offside rule. I agree with the hon. Member for Chesterfield that this microscopic analysis is absolutely killing the game. We now see situations where a referee might decide that something was a goal, but the VAR decides, after two minutes of consultation and with 10, 11 or 12 different camera angles, that somebody’s toenail—that was the hon. Gentleman’s example—might have been offside, which is clearly nonsense. I guess it comes back to his point that we call football the beautiful game for a reason. We do not call it the forensic game or the legalistic game, which it is increasingly becoming.

Before I conclude, I will address what is actually the biggest threat facing our game, which is obviously coronavirus. Most professional clubs—certainly my own—do not have a lucrative sponsorship deal or big TV deal. Indeed, many are not sitting on big reserves. In the case of Airdrieonians, something like 45% to 50% of its revenue comes from gate receipts. It is probably a bit of a nonsense to expect the football season to resume in April—I think most of us probably appreciate that no football will be played this side of the summer, although a decision will be taken about that later in the week—so the Government should definitely give more clarity about what will actually happen, in terms of sport being played and the safety around that.

There is also a question of what should happen to the football season. Will it be declared null and void? Are we in a situation where we just say that whoever is top of a particular league should be designated as champions?