What a wonderful start to the season, for Portsmouth.

I won?t go into detail about the ins and outs of Saturday?s game, as I?m sure everyone has seen the highlights and read the reports, of what was an abysmal afternoon for Rovers.

The glaring issue that jumps out of the match is the need for video cameras to be used to survey the game to watch out for things that referees may not pick up on in games. Things like a bloody good tackle made by Andy Todd in our box, which subsequently saw Todd sent off, and a penalty awarded in Pompey?s favour.

Ok so it wasn?t clearly a brilliant tackle from the view that the referee had, but video evidence clearly shows Todd getting a foot to the ball, before Kanu fell over him. Fortunately this did not have any bearing on the result of this match as the penalty was saved. However it will have an impact on Wednesdays night?s home game against Everton, since Todd (and Lucas Neill, no arguments there) are both suspended, and Nelsen and Zurab are both still struggling with injuries!

As I said above, with the use of video cameras that officials have access to during the game, this sort of mistake can be prevented, along with disallowed goals (Ask Roy Carroll about that one), and dives (no names need named here, I?m sure everybody can think of someone). As is the case with all debates there are reasons for and against, but in my humble opinion, the reasons for outweigh the reasons against; which include the tradition of the game, and the fact that it may slow the game down.

I?m not going to compare the use of cameras in football to how they are used in rugby league on disputed tries, as I?d like to keep football, and egg chasing as far apart as possible. I think it can definitely benefit football in general and is worth a shot!

The only consolation Rovers will take from Saturday?s farce is that we lost 3-1 to West Ham on the opening day of last season, and managed to bounce back and maintain excellent form throughout the season!

Yours Hopefully…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Blackburn Rovers. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.