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Should video ref's be introduced?

Your team has just crashed out of the 1st round of the champion's cup. A bad mistake by the man in black has condemned your side to a place in the UEFA cup, instead of progressing to the money spinning 2nd group stage of the biggest club tournament in the world. 

This terrible refing decision could have cost your club millions of pounds in revenue. 

With modern technology as advanced as it is right now, is it time that football adopted the same stance as rugby and cricket?, and brought in video referees. 

Unfortunately I do not have the answers to that, but I will hopefully put forward the advantages and disadvantages of video referees in this guide. 

Despite referees being employed professionally at the start of this season, mistakes are still common place in today's game. Those men in black who run their hearts out for 90 minutes every Saturday afternoon, quite often walk off the pitch at the end of the game having to be escorted by the police or the stadiums security, wondering why they bother placing themselves at the mercy of 30-40,000 supporters each week. Not to mention the players and managers. 

This has urged many players, managers and supporters to ask the question, should we introduce video referees to professional football? 

The biggest advantage of having video refs in our national game would be to cut down on dubious decisions, and maybe even cut them out all together. 

But at what cost? 
Introducing a video ref will cause just as many problems as it solves. 
Football is an action packed fast game (unless of course you are watching Swindon Town play) and introducing a video ref will immediately put a stop to the flow of a football match that we are all so used to. 

With players and managers wanting to dispute almost every decision on the field, football (soccer) will soon become as fluent as American football. With stoppages happening almost all the time. 

Although in saying that, football is getting so quick these days that it is becoming more and more clear that something needs to be done. 
Having video referees is clearly the most popular option with everybody who is involved and loves watching football. But before it is introduced it needs to be thought out properly, and a decent plan needs to be introduced before it is brought into matches. 

Technology is advancing all the time, especially in football. We've already seen Sky Sports take football viewing to a new level with Sky Sports active, Andy Gray discussing matches via that computer graphic (Used briefly a couple of seasons ago) and the many cameras that are now present at every Premiership game around the country. 

Unfortunately more is needed if Video ref's are to be introduced to Professional football matches. 

For starters, football cannot afford to use the same stop and check rule which is now used in rugby and cricket. 
Football is a lot faster, and recent rules have been brought in to speed up the game even more (Goalkeepers only having 6 seconds to clear the ball, not being able to pick up from a back pass, etc). 

How quickly would players and supporters get fed up with a game that has to be constantly stopped to judge a decision on the pitch? 
How often would a game need to be stopped? 
And who would decide which decisions have to be discussed and looked at again? (The ref?, the players?, the managers?) 

Although a lot of us would like to see fairer decisions made, Do we really want to see the game we love stopped time and time again to see whether Michael Owen was offside before he blasted the ball into the bottom corner of the net? Or whether he should have been sent off or just given a yellow card) 

Just thinking about using it for offside decisions yet again throws up more questions. 
What happens if Michael Owen races over the halfway line and is bounding in on goal, yet the other team are claiming an offside decision? 
Even a player as fast as Owen would take several seconds to reach the goal and have a shot at goal. 

Let's say that Mr Owen goes on to score, yet the referee decides to consult his video referee. 
The replay is shown over and over again before the video ref decides that Owen was very marginally offside. 
This means to say that Owen has continued to play to the whistle (Which had not been blown), he has used a lot of energy to burst forward and score, yet the game has been stopped for several minutes while a decision is made, and his hard work has been for nothing, and cancelled out. 

Now, obviously if this situation arose then the final decision would have been fair. But should a player really be punished several minutes later for a borderline decision? 

Let's look at it the other way, and say that Owen wasn't offside. Then the game would have been stopped for several minutes for no reason. 
Both ways would not bode well with either side, as players would be warming down with each stoppage on the pitch. 

I can see only one solution to using video referees, and that is to introduce a similar thing they have in tennis. Whereas a beep or alarm could sound whenever a forward pass is made and a player is in an offside decision. 
But do we have the technology to introduce such a thing? 

How would the machine determine whether the forward pass is a through ball for a shot on goal? (i.e. A defender may just be passing the ball forward to the centre circle, or he may be lifting it over the midfield to a forward). 

If this is possible and a noise is heard (Either around the stadium or to an ear piece which is worn by the ref and his assistants), then, and only then should the video refs be brought into play. 
So far I have only touched on how difficult it would be to decide over offsides. But what about sending's off? 
Let's say Michael Owen is judged to have fouled an opponent and the ref gives him a yellow card. The opposition are going to want to see a replay if they think he deserves a red card. 

With fouls increasing each season, this could certainly slow down the game. 
Lets say that Owen receives a red card. His manager doesn't agree and so asks for the video ref to be consulted. What then happens if it clearly shows that there was no foul at all, or that he only deserved a yellow card. Does that mean that the decision will be reversed? 

Surely this would not help the game at all. 

Finally I would just like to briefly touch on goals. Personally I don't think video refs are needed for goals. 
Why can't football introduce the same technology that is used in Ice Hockey? Where a buzzer/alarm is sounded when the puck has crossed the line. 
Surely with the technology we have today, some kind of infa red beam can be placed across the goal line, which can detect the flight of the ball close to the goal line. 

Obviously this would need to be extremely advanced, so as not to sound when a player is close to the line. But I'm sure with the technology we have today, this can be done. 

I could go on a lot longer, discussing the pro's and con's of having video referees, but this guide is already beginning to get rather large, so I will leave it up to you to leave a comment on what you think about this disputable topic. (AMENDED: Please feel free to discuss on the forums).

Personally I would love to see video refs introduced, but only if it is for the good of the game. 
What I don't want is for (proper) football to become American football. 

Copyright - Kevin Porter 2003