Melbourne Storm

[Thryleon]

Regardless of the result, I think the NRL Final has highlighted the weak points of various video review systems.

They may improve the error rate but they will never be perfect, they just move the decision towards an ever finer line that is largely beyond human perception. For me this minuscule reduction in errors comes at a massive cost, the spectacle of the game is greatly degraded, we've already seen soccer go this way and it's becoming a joke with imaginary lines indicating a fingernail was offside. I fear we can see the AFL heading in the same direction!

Why would sports do this to itself?

The answer is simple, gambling revenue, gambling is big dollars from big sponsors who have big influence.

The video reviews are sold to the public as a need to get things right for the sake of the sport, but it's about wallets first with the sport as a spectacle coming in a distant second. I'd rather the old days, with a umpiring that is autocratic and authoritarian, and the games were not disrupted.

Even worse than the disruption of the video review is when officials retrospectively use uncorrelated footage to defend something that they apparently got wrong. Just come out and say we stuffed up and move on, don't go down the route of trying to sell us the idea that left was right, you're not Donald Trump and this isn't Kansas, just own your mistakes!

Nah you are focussing on the decisions that were always line ball.

I still remember Tom Hawkins hitting the post vs St. Kilda in a grand final, and the goal being paid.

Any system that removes that eventuality, and brings in a bit more clarity is good.

The ones that are very hairline need to just have an over arching opinion placed on it such as, when VAR cannot tell, then its effectively Umpires call.

I think thats fine.  My issue with VAR is when it is used unnecessarily to verify the umpires call.  There was one such example of an arbitrary behind in our elimination final vs Brisbane that was conjecture over touched or not, and I just sat there thinking, what a waste of time in a game that was already dead.