Fran may want to find a chair at this point, as I'm going to say that, in my opinion, having a 4th official to look at a video in the heat of a game is not something that is workable, at the moment. There are too many variables to conjure with, unless the referee and assistants are clearly unsighted, and can't make the obvious decision. However, the situation of no witness, no crime, clearly can't continue for too much longer, when the majority of 30-40,000 people in a stadium, bar the 3 most important persons, have all seen it correctly. So, when it is clear, there needs to be a guaranteed mechanism in place that can alert the referee to his howler. Not just for handballs, but for obvious fouls or non-fouls, offsides, etc.., anything that the referee has got obviously incorrect. Nobody wants Maradona to score his hand-of-god goal again, or Henry to put the French through to the World Cup with two handballs in quick succession, when all they actually were doing, was cheating. Thankfully, because of a great system in Hawk-Eye, Roy Carroll can never save that goal again, when it was a yard over the line. Football needs to get over the stumbling block to allow the officials to be wrong. They are fallible, yet there is this old fashioned rigid dogma that they can't be. Once this apparent embarrassment is overcome, officials can relax again, ref the game again, being reasonably certain that major decisions can be called correctly, whether they've been able to see them or not. I'm not saying never. For years, I've been calling for a system which aids the referee, and as soon as an agreed, properly workable system can be used, then it should be trialled. Somebody needs the imagination to come up with it, because the present situation is falling apart. Hawk-Eye is ultra precise and has set a huge standard, which means that 4th officials, gazing at monitors, is too vague a system for the rest of the controversies. There needs to be a quick system that can approach that level of consistency and competency.
Agree with the referees in Rugby and also in cricket becoming too reliant on the technology which even interrupts the flow of these sports and mutes the enjoyment for the supporters. You can't celebrate a try or wicket wholeheartedly because you're always standing around waiting for confirmation. It wasn't just the England players who were farcical at the recent Ashes, but the umpires ignoring no balls, meaning player who were bowled out had to stand around whilst the video ref checked for a no ball and don't get me started on run out decisions. The default is always the video ref, even during reasonably clear outs. To me the umpires are becoming overpaid clothes horses.
