Keep technology out of football

Roy Hay

(Earlier versions of the this article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser, Goal Weekly and Neos Osmos).

A referee gets a decision wrong. Perhaps. His supervisor does not think he did, even if the rest of the world, having seen a video replay is convinced otherwise. Does this mean football should succumb to the clamour for the introduction of technology to second-guess the officials in football matches? The case is not clear cut and arguments against going down this road are very strong.

Technology only shifts the locus of decision-making, it does not improve it. What was once a decision of metres becomes one of centimetres. You might make a case for photo-finish cameras at the end of horse-races where the gambling of millions rests on the result. But in contact sports and flowing games it is less justifiable. The area of doubt narrows apparently. But then you just argue over millimetres. Is this an improvement? Artefacts like Hawkeye and Snicko just appeal to gullible folks who think they are seeing something closer to the truth, when they are only witnessing projections of possible trajectories given a whole range of untested assumptions. These include round tennis balls with no fuzz, smooth edges on bats, balls with no seams, which do not deviate in flight.

Not only that but the presentation on television undermines umpires and referees who are second-guessed by others. If the technology could give the football referee in charge an instant and accurate replay to a hand-held device in real time within a second of the incident so that he or she could review anything about which he had doubts, allowing the game to flow, then it might be worth considering. Even then I’d be doubtful. FIFA’s International Board is considering two systems for goal-line decisions only. One uses cameras the other a micro-chip inside the ball and sensors. How the latter will go after being kicked around a pitch for up to 120 minutes plus penalties and in half-a-dozen balls is a concern. It must be robust, says FIFA, and then some. The costs of these systems will be significant which means they will only be used in big games, destroying the notion that the same laws apply everywhere.  FIFA insist that the system will provide information to the referee so that his or her decision remains final and the material would not be broadcast. I think it will be impossible to hold that line since everyone will want to know what the decision was based on.

In football the extra official behind the goal line miked to the referee with a remit to decide on the ball crossing the line and shirt pulling in the penalty-box at corner kicks would, to my mind, be more effective. FIFA says it will decide on goal-line technology at the meeting of the International Board in Kiev on 2 July 2012, and it will then be up to organisers of competitions as to whether they wish to adopt it. But FIFA is likely to use it at the club world cup in December if  the Board gives the all clear.

The other strike against technology for football is that if you introduce it for goal-line decisions, then as Sepp Blatter the head of FIFA and others have pointed out, you lose the present rule which applies universally to the simple game throughout the world where the referee makes the decisions in real time. It will become harder if not impossible to prevent extending the nonsense to penalty decisions, offsides and everything else. The game will become staccato and opportunities for advertising to fill the gaps will kill the game. Beware of what you wish for and think through the consequences.

Several people have pointed out the different camera angles issue. Any incident viewed from different perspectives can be everything from a capital offence to a complete miss. You still have to the nonsense of the claim by a player, but I got the ball the first, when the problem is that he has thrown himself at an opponent in a way which runs the risk of seriously injuring him. The Muscat defence is no defence in my book. ‘I was going for the ball and just mistimed it.’

The AFL example from last weekend shows that reviews are seldom conclusive. Did the ball touch the Collingwood player’s hand after coming off his leg for the final, decisive point in the Anzac Day game with Essendon? What about the earlier one which was deemed a point after it did or did not hit the post or was touched by an Essendon defender. Debate continues on both of these long after the reviews have been exhausted.

Did you notice that the referees at the European Champions League semi-final second legs, one experienced, the other virtually new to this level, got virtually everything right, including incidents behind play. Who needs technology when you have competent performers in the officiating role?

I remain a believer in an imperfect world in which the impossible is done every day. For example, offsides are given by linesmen who are physically incapable of having one eye on the kicker deep in own half and the other on the attacker and the defenders in the other half, as a Spanish doctor proved. Unless you have two cameras in line with the ball and the attacker and split screen and probably a time code, you are not going to get any better decisions. Probably not even then. Keep technology out of football.

Roy Hay

This article appeared in Goal Weekly, 9 December 2011, p. 2, and the Geelong Advertiser, 10 December 2011, p. 42 as ‘Striking Difference.’

Beckham and Kewell. Source: Geelong Advertiser.

The David Beckham show that is Los Angeles Galaxy rolled into Etihad Stadium last night eclipsing the brief flickering of another celebrity footballer who had his moment earlier this year, Harry Kewell.

The two footballers could hardly be more different in terms of their embrace of the status they have acquired as commodities in a world of celebrity stardom and intolerable hype.

Beckham faces many times more scrutiny than Kewell and is a much bigger star in the global arena, yet he is comfortable in the role, brilliantly well adjusted and despite a manufactured attempt to pretend that he is stupid, intelligent, sensible and grounded.

Last night he handled all his media commitments with aplomb, humour and openness, including the post-match press conference, after playing all but three minutes of the match carrying a hamstring strain incurred in the championship game for his club to end their regular season prior to this tour.

Kewell by contrast nearly always appears uncomfortable in media and celebrity functions and talks incessantly about only feeling free to be himself on the football pitch.

The levels of rewards the two players receive for their efforts are very different, a clear order of magnitude exists between their incomes.

Beckham moves effortlessly between environments, continues to perform, trains like a beast, and switches to the public role with aplomb.

It is tempting to look into their different backgrounds to find the answers to these contrasting responses to their celebrity.

Beckham grew up in London, the son of lower middle class parents, who supported but did not push him.

He idolised Manchester United and got the chance to join the club as part of a golden generation which had stellar success in their first full season in the senior team, demolishing Liverpool legend and football pundit Alan Hansen’s forecast, ‘You will never win anything with kids.’

He went on to win the European Champions League with United, then fell out with Sir Alex Ferguson and moved to Real Madrid and won La Liga with them before going to Galaxy for five years on a £25 million contract.

He played for England in the World Cup and European championships.

Kewell grew up in Sydney, the son of English lower middle class parents, who supported but did not push him.

He represented New South Wales in the national championships at Under-15 in 1994 and soon afterwards went to Leeds United on trial where he was offered a contract which he was able to accept through his English parentage.

He represented Australia at youth level, made his breakthrough into the Leeds senior team in 1996 and was fast-tracked into the Australian national team in April that year against Chile.

A move to Liverpool then followed and it included a start and a winner’s medal in a European Champions League final against AC Milan in 2005.

He represented Australia at the World Cup in Germany and South Africa.

Both are photogenic and can be fashion plates when the mood takes them.

Both Kewell and Beckham married celebrity performers—Sheree Murphy, who played Tricia Dingle on Emmerdale on United Kingdom television, and Victoria Adams better known as ‘Posh Spice’ respectively.

The Kewells have three children, the Beckhams have four.

Though the levels might be different, the careers have a lot in common and both have had a long time to come to terms with their status and circumstances.

Both had serious low points and consequent vilification in their careers. Beckham was pilloried for being sent off for kicking an Argentinian player during the World Cup in France in 1998 in a match which England eventually lost on penalties.

Kewell was believed to be malingering at Liverpool and was booed by the fans when he limped off in the European Cup final.

He had a long series of injuries in his career and some linked these were linked in the popular mind to picking and choosing which matches he played for the Socceroos over a long period.

You get the sense that Kewell is much less secure in himself, than Beckham and has been for a long period seen as dependent on his manager Bernie Mandic, while Team Beckham has always been dominated by the principal himself.

Kewell recently parted company with Mandic, which may be an indication of increasing maturity.

Kewell makes noises about putting back into the game when he finishes playing, while Beckham has already done so on a significant scale with academies in London and other places where disadvantaged children can follow their dream.

Did Kewell dodge the column by failing to appear in the match against Galaxy or was he so determined to be fit for the critical A-League match against Adelaide United at the weekend that he did not want to risk injury? Or was he sure his star would be eclipsed if he went head-to head with Beckham? It would have been a match to savour, but it did not happen.

As it happened Kewell did appear to be interviewed at half-time during the match saying that he was fit and keen to play. The implication being that his coach Mehmet Durakovic, with his career potentially on the line, decided to hold him back for the Adelaide game.

While this is understandable from a Victory perspective, short changing the fans who paid up to $170.00 for a seat is very cynical.

How many of them were seduced by the pre-match Beckham versus Kewell hype?

Roy Hay

(This appeared in the Geelong Advertiser, on 5 December 2011, p. 20 as ‘Book it now, Winnie. Diversions, plagiarism and whodunnits’).

It is time once again for the annual reading list which might assist some of you looking for something to delve into over the holidays or for a present for a friend or family member whom you know still enjoys the pleasure of a book they can handle and smell as well as read.

If John Harms did nothing but produce the Football Almanac each year with Paul Daffey he would justify his status as a living national treasure, but he also writes some first class journalism. Geelong fans will turn quickly to the grand final replays led off by Cathy Sullivan, whose first published journalism was on the doings of the juniors and seniors of the Western Victoria Soccer Association in the Geelong Advertiser. Now she produces stories for Lateline on ABC, and she can evoke the spirit of Geelong families and their football team in a few deft words. John Harms also presides over a loose combination of amateur and professional contributors on sport to a website called the The Footy Almanac (www. footyalmanac.com.au). The quality is variable, the content sometimes very moving. The site is free of the kind of vituperative abuse which disfigures so many vox pop offerings on the net.

Simon Townley’s Good to Great, the story of the Cats’ 12 year journey from near death to 3 premierships in five years and their plans to stay at the top arrived only this morning and so too late to be included in the Advertiser article. Full of pictures and great insight into the football revolution, on and off the field, it is something not just for the died in the woolly jumpers Catters but anyone interested in the transformation of an also-ran into a success. It is a story  with resonance outside sport as well.

Also hot off the press in the United Kingdom and launched in Geelong and Melbourne in December is Jennifer Kloester’s biography of Georgette Heyer. I have to declare an interest, because Jennifer has been a student and colleague for several years. Her companion to Heyer’s regency novels is already a best-seller and the biography will enhance her reputation as it reveals the most private of authors, whose popularity continues today and whose books are still in print. Jennifer also has turned her skills to writing a novel for young adults, which has been accepted for publication by Penguin.

Steve Craddock put me on to James Robertson, And the land lay still. This is probably the Scottish novel of recent times and certainly a brilliant recreation of the mid and late 20^th century. It takes several individuals and families and weaves them into a sympathetic but critical portrait of a country coming to terms with its altered place in the world.

David Crystal, The story of English in 100 words, is also available as an e-book. It starts with ‘roe’ which he thinks may be the first English word written down and proceeds to recent importations into the language from the twittersphere. Crystal has several books on the language but this is probably the most accessible and something you can dip into or read consecutively as the words are arranged more or less chronologically as they came into use.

Hazel Rowley’s Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage has been justly praised in the United States and round the world. The complex relationships between the four-term American President and the woman who supported him throughout his political career and carved out a pioneering role for herself are sensitively explored. Hazel, who was a colleague for some time at Deakin University, died tragically young from cancer, but not before writing acclaimed biographies of Christina Stead and Richard Wright and a brilliant account of the partnership of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. A fund has been established in her name to assist a writer with funding for travel and research so her influence will continue.

A request to do a review took me to Ideologies in the Age of Extremes: Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914–91. It was an excellent idea of Willie Thompson’s to re-examine the dominant ideologies of that most ideological of ages, Eric Hobsbawm’s short twentieth century, from the outbreak of the First World War to the collapse of Soviet communism. A generation of students has grown up since then who live in a very different world where the forces which contend are very different both in content and in relation to each other. This is a worthwhile introduction to the period covered.

Patrick Mangan’s, Offsider is a Nick Hornbyesque account of growing up inspired by soccer in an Aussie Rules world. He and his brother John, both later excellent journalists, started their first soccer paper at primary school in rural Victoria. How could I not love a precocious pair of youths who had the presence and wit to adopt Ayr United as their team? Ayr was my home town team in Scotland and one for which my grandfather played and managed.

Another book with a soccer theme is by Les Murray on The World Game. I got an early copy which contained a story about the relationship between Lucas Neil and the then Australian coach, Pim Verbeek, which led to a threat to sue the author. It was reissued without the offending material and the rest is Murray’s view of soccer and its star performers rather than a history of the code.

The most impressive history I read this year is David Reynolds, In Command of History: Fighting and Writing the Second World War. This is a tour de force which compares Churchill’s six volumes of personal history of the war with what he did, said and wrote at the time before and after he became Prime Minister. Reynolds brings out the many ways in which the later account needs to be understood in terms of the political and other circumstances during which it was compiled. It is excellent critical history which does not diminish Churchill, but does not let him get away with many omissions and revisions of his stance on issues. Also it delineates very clearly the extent to which Churchill relied on his team of writers and researchers some of whose work appears in the books virtually verbatim but under the author’s name.

A much longer book, covering a shorter period, and less innovative in its approach is James Holland’s The Battle of Britain. You will have read about 500 pages before you get to the main phases of the war in the air, which people correctly believe to be the nub of the affair. Holland’s account has several good stories of individuals, bringing out elements in the behavior and character of some of the leading figures which are often underplayed in previous accounts, but little new information on the overall course of events.

My crime fiction includes the annual offerings of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Peter Robinson, and I have now worked my way through all of Stella Rimington’s Liz Carlyle novels and her autobiography as head of MI5. She is not in Le Carré’s league, but can produce page-turners, which become more illuminating once you have read her own story.

Finally Eileen Shorrock gave me a couple of copies of the Staffordshire Sentinel for February and March 2000 which almost make a short book in themselves. They included the tributes and the stories about Sir Stanley Matthews who died that year. A superstar in his generation ‘The Wizard of the Dribble’ was the David Beckham of his era. He came to Australia with Blackpool in 1958 and returned several times thereafter to coach but not to play competitively. Jon Henderson is writing a new biography and would like anyone with stories about Matthews in Australia to get in touch. He can be contacted at jon5@talktalk.net.

In defence of the humanities

Roy Hay

This article was published in the Geelong Advertiser on 23 November 2011 and reproduced on the Deakin University website at http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/stories/2011/11/23/the-value-of-the-humanities

It is not often that academics take leave of their research and teaching duties to plunge into political matters, but in the United Kingdom led by those at Oxford University they have passed a series of motions of no confidence in the David Willetts, the minister responsible for universities. The burden of their complaints is the increased cost of education to students through sharp rises in fees and the attack on funding for the humanities. It is the latter element with which this column is concerned, since it is not just a UK problem but a global one and Australia is facing a similar crisis.

Jonathan Bate, the new Provost of Worcester College, Oxford conducted some research among his peers while editing a collection of essays on the Public Value of the Humanities. He asked them how they would respond to a civil servant responsible for the research budget who told them he did not mind public money being spent on medical research but he objected to it being devoted to research in the humanities. He was intrigued by the responses as some argued for the strictly utilitarian benefits of such study, while others suggested that humanities matter because they take us beyond the realm of narrow economic or utilitarian values.

One historically minded philosopher said that a Syrian scholar wanted to translate his book into Arabic, because he thought the Islamic world needed an introduction of secular philosophy. “Given the billions that the military option wastes, wasn’t I more economically efficient?” Another picked up the point that if George W Bush’s and Tony Blair’s security and strategic advisers had studied the Middle East and Afghanistan thoroughly the world would have been a less dangerous place.

Yet another pointed out that Bertrand Russell’s and Noam Chomsky’s philosophical investigation into language and logic contributed to the artificial languages which underpin computer science today. More generally, broad critical thinking is pre-eminently what the humanities engender and this is indispensable to innovative work in any field and certainly to communicating it to others inside and outside academia.

At times of economic crisis it is always tempting to ask what can we cut first without causing the pips to squeak. So if you can define something as a luxury subject it is easier to take the axe to it, than something where the economic pay-off seems more immediate. But this is often very short-sighted since it is the fundamental research in broad areas of human existence which often turns up the key element for the future.

Take the recently departed Steve Jobs and his company Apple for an example. Their success was not dependent on original technology, but rather selective borrowing, while the design of the products to incorporate that technology was the key to their success. Design derived from centuries of art and creativity and a deep understanding of the psychology of human beings. Of all disciplines art and psychology depend on a fruitful blending of sciences and humanities, not their separation.

Here in Australia the public funding for arts and humanities is also under severe pressure. We do not have the American counterweight in a long and healthy tradition of private philanthropy. Last week Deakin University was delighted to report that Professor Kevin Nicholas had won a Grand Challenges Exploration grant of $100,000 to explore the use of wallaby milk to help babies absorb nutrients more easily to increase their chance of survival. Two points about this success are relevant. The grant comes from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, financed by the success of Gates’ Microsoft Company. Secondly, how are Nicholas and his team going to communicate the results of their work to the parents of children at risk in third world countries? It will not happen just because they have made a scientific breakthrough, but through a myriad of processes which derive just as much from research in the humanities about communication and cultural processes.

The death of Steve Jobs and the outpouring of interest in the man and his machines sent me scurrying back to my old diaries to find when I first got involved with an Apple Macintosh. Jobs launched the first Macintosh in 1984, an interesting year in George Orwell’s calendar, and there on Thursday 15 November 1984 is my cryptic entry, simply ‘Macintosh 10.30 am’. For the following several months my boss at Deakin University, Jim Polhemus, allowed myself and a colleague, John Craig, to play with the new computers to the point where we understood what they could and could not do. It was clear that the pair of us were besotted by the new technology, but the upside was that once we could see their value to the school, and in particular the secretarial staff, who were under severe pressure to cope with the flood of course and research material being produced by the academic staff, we could assist those who were coming new to personal computing to cope with the transition.

The early Macs and Mac Pluses were transportable, though only just, so I supplemented them with a Tandy TRS-80, which was about the size of a modern laptop. It had 32 kilobytes of memory and a tiny screen on which you could only see three or four lines, yet I could do a day’s note-taking in the library or write half a dozen stories for the Geelong Advertiser on it. With the Tandy I could dial into the paper’s computer and send my story at 40 baud, which was very, very slow, but with untimed local calls this was not an issue. The material on the Tandy could be downloaded to my Mac at home and from there on to a single-sided floppy disk which could go in my pocket when I cycled to work. We thought we were the bees knees at the time as very few people had computers which were intuitive to work with and did not require the intervention of computer-speaking technical geeks (though this word had not joined the language at the time).

There is a Macwrite document on the Mac Plus I store in our granny flat which has the results of the World Cup qualification games involving Scotland in 1985, including the two games with Australia which I saw. That was the year my wife’s father died in October, and our son Ross was already in the United Kingdom with the Victorian Under-13 Country Region team, which played and trained in four countries. After the funeral in the north of Scotland, the news came through that Australia was going to play the first leg of the play-offs at Hampden Park on 20 November. So there was a mad scramble to rearrange our return airline tickets so that we could go to the game. Then we flew back and I saw the second leg at Olympic Park on 4 December. Scotland won on aggregate, but that was probably the tipping point for me as I changed my allegiance from the country of my birth to the place where I was already a citizen.

All this was recorded now on computer and, though a colleague once told me I wanted to be at the cutting edge of obsolescence, I continued to update my Macs at regular intervals. I bought an SE30 in 1990 and thought I had the best Mac ever, something I still believed until I got a 27” iMac for my desktop and a Macbook Air as my portable machine in recent times. The former let me have two full pages open side by side and made editing a breeze for my wife. The latter reduced the curvature of my spine when I was carrying laptop, printer, scanner, camera, binoculars and associated power cords and transformers around when I went travelling or to football matches. Strangely enough the Mac which is missing from the line of machines I have owned is that SE30 which I took to Cairns for our grandson many years ago. I must see if I can find one at a swap meet or old computer sale. I wonder if there are any readers who have one they are prepared to part with?

Also by David Wyllie: A Blink in Time’s Eye: Teaching in the Middle School (1997), Kendah and the Moving Star (2001), The Eaton Chronicles (2003), and Abernan (2005).

David Wyllie and Frances Hay on the Great Ocean Road. Photo: Roy Hay

David Wyllie is the son of a Scot from Arbroath and a half-Scottish, half-French lady from Maine. He spent his professional life as a teacher of middle-school students—‘the best kids there are’—and retired to write novels. His avocation has always been Scotland, particularly its tumultuous history and politics. Now he lives beside a lake in the State of Maine, but he goes to Scotland every chance he gets. Sadly, his last attempt to get there was foiled by an ash plume from Eyjafjallajokul, an Icelandic volcano.

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The biography of Catherine Wells, born in 1914, who left school in Easter Ross at 14, worked in domestic service and brought up a family in wartime when her husband was badly wounded and who later published her collected poems and short stories at the age of 86.

Catherine Wells, with the assistance of Roy and Frances Hay, Catherine Wells: An Extraordinary Ordinary Woman, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Teesdale, Victoria, 2004, ISBN 0-9751970-1-0, RRP $25.00 is available through Griffiths bookshop, Ryrie Street, Geelong, Melbourne Sports Books, Flinders Street, Melbourne or by post from Sports and Editorial Services Australia, 85 Fairway Crescent, Teesdale, Victoria, 3328 at RRP of $25.00, plus $5.00 post and packing. It is also available through Amazon UK at an RRP of £9.95.

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Few historians have discussed Fisher’s role in the Dreadnought scare of 1909 or explored the background to his attempts to change the Constitution in order to correct the considered deficiencies in the original drafting. This book attempts to redress these omissions from historical scholarship.

Edward (Ted) William Humphreys was born in 1926 in London, England, where he qualified as a chartered accountant. Romantically, on an audit in 1955 he met Alison, an Australian-qualified accountant, and they married in 1956. From 1956 to 1971 they worked and lived in Sudan, Pakistan, India, Singapore and South-East Asia, and then transferred to Australia in November 1971. Ted retired in 1986 and, while engaged in community work, he cast around for something extra, saying, ‘I can’t play golf and can’t afford a yacht, so what else can I do?’ He began as a mature student at Monash University completing a Bachelor of Arts and continued with a Bachelor of Letters and a BA Honours at Deakin University. He went on to complete his Master of Arts at the University of Melbourne. This book is based on his thesis for that degree.

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Edward W. Humphreys, Andrew Fisher: The Forgotten Man, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Teesdale, Victoria, 2007.

This is the footballing life story of James ‘Dun’ Hay, 1881-1940, captain of Celtic, Scotland and Newcastle United, who was suspended for life for refusing to apologise after accusing a director of Ayr United and the Treasurer of the Scottish Football Association of trying to bribe a referee in 1926.

Roy Hay, James ‘Dun’ Hay, 1881-1940: The Story of a Footballer, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Teesdale, Victoria, 2004, ISBN 0-9751970-0-2 which has more than 50 illustrations, is available through Griffiths bookshop, Ryrie Street, Geelong, Melbourne Sports Books, Flinders Street, Melbourne or by post from Sports and Editorial Services Australia, 85 Fairway Crescent, Teesdale, Victoria, 3328 at RRP of $25.00, plus $5.00 post and packing. It is also available through Amazon UK at an RRP of £9.95.

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For more information, click on the link below.

James Dun Hay, 1881-1940: The Story of a Footballer