Technology is everywhere these days, and in many instances it helps make our lives that little bit easier. Here’s some examples:
- Turn on your house lights when you’re away from home.
- Speak ‘face-to-face’ with friends and family who live on the other side of the world whenever we want.
- Send an alert to health care providers when you have a problem.
- Let us keep up to date with world events as they happen.
However, it struck me towards the end of the football season just finished, that while in many football matches we now have the love it or hate it, VAR, as well as goal line technology to tell us if a ball as crossed the line or not, there’s another part of the game I find it incredible that we’re still using the same system as was used many years ago.
Have you any thoughts on what I’m thinking about?
Assistant referees!
They still run up and down the line with just their flag to wave to try and capture the referee’s attention when they spot a free kick, offside, throw in, goal kick, substitution etc.
Surely in this day and age there must be a better way to get the referee’s attention that by waving a flag?! How about some technology that the assistant referee presses a button to indicate what they’ve seen and that immediately alerts the referee, not just to the fact that the assistant has spotted something, but also what type of offence or situation they’ve spotted.
We don’t need to rely on the referee spotting their assistant flagging, we can do this much more effectively. What do you think, are you with me?