Scottish Football’s VAR Delay Is Epic Foot-Dragging And An Utter Embarrassment.

Scottish football is set to delay the vote on the implementation of VAR, by several months.

The excuse the SFA is offering is that there are still some unanswered questions at clubs.

I find that explanation to be utterly without merit. This is not rocket science.

This is another example of the ineptitude we all have to put up with. This is foot-dragging. This is wasting time that we could spending putting this thing in place. Bad enough that the schedule already calls for waiting until after the Dubai World Cup, a date that rules out half of next season when there’s no real obstacle to putting this in place right now.

Celtic should be fuming behind the scenes. I am absolutely certain that we are not the club who are holding this up. Who is? The cost of it is paltry; £70,000 “collectively”, which means between everyone.

We could pay it all ourselves, out of the petty cash.

The reports say that there has been no change to the mood of the clubs either; they are still in favour of this.

Just not now. Nor in the immediate future.

At some point, in the future, however distant, yeah let’s give it a go; it is pathetic, and this is what holds up progress.

What are these people afraid of?

What questions could they possibly need answers which accounts for the delay? The system itself is sheer simplicity; leagues all over the world manage to implement it without the least bit of difficulty.

For us to be playing these games makes our national sport a laughing stock and the backwater so many people seem determined to paint it as. Are we modern and forward thinking, or on the way to a Polish parliament style system requiring universal agreement, with only a lone voice needing to speak up to say “Sisto activitatem!” and everything comes to a halt?

If clubs do have questions, why is going to take an age to answer them?

If I was in their shoes and got questions about VAR I could have the answers in short order.

The initial phase would take just ten minutes.

Five would be spent checking out those who’ve used it, and the other five would be spent emailing them all asking them to provide whatever information they could.

Are our governing bodies beyond doing something so simple?

Is there anything the clubs want to know that will require a longer process than that?

Why are Celtic sites viewing this as a delaying tactic?

Why do we get the impression that the SFA and other organisations are backtracking on this?

Why do we get the feeling that the planned implimentation date, midway through next season, will be pushed to the season after that, and that in between times they’ll find some other excuse or pretext on which to delay the idea yet again?

Hold the damned vote. Get it official. Then implement the policy.

Only in Scotland could this be a complicate business, because only in Scotland are we dealing with such blinkered, entrenched opposition to something that would change the game for the better.

And where that opposition comes from, and the reasons for it, it doesn’t take a genius to work it out.