VAR is here to stay so I'll bite my tongue and move on

The war is lost. It is time to accept defeat and adjust to the new way of things. And to issue a promise that this will be the last column I write about VAR.

It is going to be a near-universal feature of football next season whether we approve or not and the fact that most people like it, at least for now, means those of us who detest the prospect of football changing so fundamentally, with regular pesky, pointless interruptions and an inability to celebrate goals properly for fear of them being chalked off, must button our lip and get used to the existence of the video assistant referee.

There is no correct answer to the question of whether or not video should be used to make refereeing decisions in the same way there is no correct answer to whether the Conservatives or Labour should be the governing party.

And if the majority of people want one over the other, those who are in the minority just have to swallow it.

I begrudgingly admit this transitional season, whereby VAR has been used in some competitions but not others, has not been quite as hideous as feared, but I would still prefer football to be 90 minutes of mayhem and have no great desire for absolutely every decision to be right (a) because they almost all are anyway and (b) it’s just football and the occasional wrong call, innocently made, has always been an element of what makes the game so madly magical.

The worst aspect of VAR has been its ability to detect offences, notably handballs, that nobody spotted at the time and that everyone would have been perfectly happy to have overlooked. Its most worrying aspect is that as it becomes accepted it will generate a desire to ensure more possible errors are analysed, causing even more stoppages in even less significant situations such as disputed throw-ins on the halfway line.

Obviously there have been occasions when the video ref has corrected what would have been pretty major errors - it really would be a bizarrely daft innovation if that did not happen - but I maintain the additional pauses, some of which have been farcical, have not been worth it for the clearing up of what many people ludicrously refer to as injustices.

Recently I have taken great delight, when debates rage about perceived refereeing mistakes, in telling participants in the arguments not to worry because next season everyone’s beloved VAR will completely eliminate errors.

While I actually very much doubt that will be the case I do at least hope media companies, and particularly TV broadcasters, will no longer see the need to employ ex-refs to slag off their former colleagues by criticising their decisions with the benefit of replays.

“Let’s hear from Peter Walton,” have become the most dreaded five words in football, signalling as it does the former arbiter chipping in with his video-assisted view of whether the ref, who has had one real-time look at every incident, has got it right. I for one do not give the remotest toss what Walton thinks, yet BT treat his views with so much importance it is as if they genuinely believe matches will be halted and goals chalked off if he insists on it.

It is the willingness of referees to accept this grubby payment when they retire that increases my reluctance to praise the serving crop, but they deserve some backing because the criticism they receive is chronically unjust.

I get particularly narked when people claim the standard of refereeing has never been worse. This is untrue, unfair and unjustified. I still marvel at how brilliantly they evaluate most situations, especially diving, something former officials did not have to deal with anything like as frequently.

Indeed when one looks at the proliferation of individual awards in football the lack of a Referee of the Year accolade is a glaring omission that the Premier League should rectify immediately.

All bar a small number of the 18 people who have taken charge of Premier League matches this season have performed their duties superbly and it is a shame none of them has the chance to be recognised as the best in class.

It would also give potential new refs something to aspire to and when you look at how they are treated in junior and park football it is crystal clear more needs to be done to make refereeing something people want to take up.

Of those who tend to be given control of the bigger fixtures, I would say Andre Marriner and Kevin Friend are among the less fantastic whistlers, while Craig Pawson appears to have regressed slightly having looked on his way to the top.

But the majority of Premier League refs have had a brilliant season. Michael Oliver is truly world-class, Martin Atkinson continues to operate at a remarkably high standard, and Paul Tierney and Chris Kavanagh have broken into the top echelon with consistently impeccable displays.

Special word must go to Mike Dean, in his 19th year as a top-flight referee. The stick he receives is utterly ridiculous and if he does not appear on an honours list soon for his outstanding service to football it will be a crying shame.

I would vote for Oliver as ref of the year but there are many worthy would-be recipients.

Theoretically, of course, they will all operate at the same level next season because any mistakes they do make will be corrected, although theory and reality may yet turn out to be different things.

But, regardless of what the future holds for the VAR, it is time for me to bite my tongue and move on. From August football will change in a way that does not thrill me, but most people seem to favour its introduction and so it is right that they get what they want.

Lack of racing at Towcester is a sad situation

I miss Towcester. I really miss Towcester. There has been no racing, involving either horses or dogs, since the venue entered administration last August.

The BHA has stated there will be no resumption of action there until October at the earliest but with each week that passes without any sign of a new operator showing a willingness to take over the Northamptonshire course the prospects of any kind of four-legged animals doing battle there look increasingly bleak.

This is a sad situation because Towcester has played a small but important part in giving British racecourses the variety that is one of the sport’s main charms.

While the dog track was a nice addition that hosted two successful Greyhound Derbys, it is the racecourse that is sorely missed.

Towcester was - actually let’s stay in the present tense for now, Towcester is a massive square circuit with a gruelling uphill finishing straight and is located in picturesque countryside in the heart of England.

As a keen distances bettor I miss those small-field cards on bottomless ground where you could buy in the knowledge that on certain days the runners would come home so spread out you struggled to believe they all started at the same time.

And the course operated a free-entry policy that clearly didn’t work financially but helped plenty of people who would otherwise have been priced out of an excellent midweek day out.

Perhaps all is not lost. Hopefully a current racecourse group will step in and save this lovely little place.

But with nine months having elapsed since the padlocks were clicked shut, the obvious question is if that was going to happen why has a deal not already been struck?

In a clinical, financial sense there may well be too many racecourses in Britain, but if we have to lose any there are others that would be less sorely missed than Towcester.

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