Apr 14 2008, 03:04 PM
Formula One 6 Football 0
QUOTE
Though it's a traditional aspect of F1 reporting to moan at the stewards for doing nothing, when it comes to rank indecision and poor judgement look no further than the beautiful game.
Spare a thought for the fans of Arsenal football club this week. Having battled head-to-head with Liverpool in the quarter-finals of the European Champions's League they find themselves dumped out of the competition - their season effectively at an end.
They were within seven minutes of going through to meet Chelsea when Liverpool were awarded a controversial penalty that gave them the game and sealed the tie. A week earlier in front of Arsenal's fans, an identical penalty shout had been turned down.
Thus Liverpool go through on a highly questionable decision - an instant reaction from a solitary official. No replays, no nothing.
Thank god F1 isn't like that.
We moan, splutter, shout and have an occasional rant about the stewards being asleep, not watching the race, all-wearing Ferrari shirts or all-wearing We Luv Lewis shirts, but in comparison to football judgement, they are Dr. Science. They are Stephen Hawking.
American Football is perhaps even more precise. With the television replays available to the referees it's extraordinarily rare that a really rank piece of judgement goes through. In the Superbowl, the New England coach threw out a challenge (they're allowed a certain amount of challenges in the game), they replayed the tape and found that the New York Giants had failed by about a second to get the twelfth man off the pitch before the ball was snapped. Incredible precision.
Later in the game they used video footage to check that a wide receiver had his feet in the field of play while his hands and the ball were somewhere over by the Gatorade bins. Compare that to football which won't even install goal-line cameras to check whether the ball has crossed the line...
Despite many protests, stretching back all the way to the 1966 World Cup Final, when England scored a dodgy goal against Germany (God bless the Polish linesman) FIFA pensioner Sepp Blatter has argued against them. Here is an example (in my opinion) of a sports administrator who really would do everyone a favour by being caught in a London dungeon with five hookers and the script from 'Allo 'Allo.
The NFL's judgement supremacy comes at a price, though, and the game is disrupted while all the calls are made. However in a sport where even the advertisers can call a time-out, nobody is that much fussed. In F1, all the judgements can be made while the race is going on, whether by the race director Charlie Whiting, or the stewards posting up things they're going to look at after the race.
Last season Charlie Whiting had a blinder, putting out Safety Cars when they were needed, and making some brilliant judgement calls to get through the Japanese Grand Prix. He even saved Kimi Raikkonen's World Championship. Without the quiet message from Whiting to Ferrari boss Jean Todt (after Ferrari failed to check their e.mail) to get both Raikkonen and Massa in to change tyres from inters to full wets at the start of the race, he would have had to black flag them.
This season it was surprising that he red-flagged Qualifying after the Takuma Sato accident in Bahrain, but the only other bone of contention has come from the stewards and the brief they have to investigate 'avoidable accidents'. When is avoidable, avoidable?
In Bahrain, they only had two big accidents to look at and they passed on both of those.
Drivers with the experience of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso should avoid hitting each other accelerating away from a corner. When you're diving into a braking zone you have so little control of a car - not so going out the other side. What we would have liked them to do is investigate the Lewis vs Fernando impact and give us the verdict, just so we know.
Does the McLaren have after-burners fitted (that somehow Lewis couldn't deploy when he was behind the Force-India). Has the Renault got a flat-spot in its acceleration curve? What part did Alonso's little sideways jink play? It was reminiscent of his sideway shimmy at the start of the Belgian GP in Spa. If his acceleration was flat, did he dab the brakes with his left foot?
These could be so easily cleared up by the stewards doing something, even if the results showed nothing at all.
Compared to football, though, we're not complaining. ITV are surrendering the F1 coverage because they need more money to pay for their continued coverage of the European Champion's League. Judging by some of the games we've had to endure this season and the quality of the refereeing they might as well have spent it on the National Lottery.
Andrew Davies
Spare a thought for the fans of Arsenal football club this week. Having battled head-to-head with Liverpool in the quarter-finals of the European Champions's League they find themselves dumped out of the competition - their season effectively at an end.
They were within seven minutes of going through to meet Chelsea when Liverpool were awarded a controversial penalty that gave them the game and sealed the tie. A week earlier in front of Arsenal's fans, an identical penalty shout had been turned down.
Thus Liverpool go through on a highly questionable decision - an instant reaction from a solitary official. No replays, no nothing.
Thank god F1 isn't like that.
We moan, splutter, shout and have an occasional rant about the stewards being asleep, not watching the race, all-wearing Ferrari shirts or all-wearing We Luv Lewis shirts, but in comparison to football judgement, they are Dr. Science. They are Stephen Hawking.
American Football is perhaps even more precise. With the television replays available to the referees it's extraordinarily rare that a really rank piece of judgement goes through. In the Superbowl, the New England coach threw out a challenge (they're allowed a certain amount of challenges in the game), they replayed the tape and found that the New York Giants had failed by about a second to get the twelfth man off the pitch before the ball was snapped. Incredible precision.
Later in the game they used video footage to check that a wide receiver had his feet in the field of play while his hands and the ball were somewhere over by the Gatorade bins. Compare that to football which won't even install goal-line cameras to check whether the ball has crossed the line...
Despite many protests, stretching back all the way to the 1966 World Cup Final, when England scored a dodgy goal against Germany (God bless the Polish linesman) FIFA pensioner Sepp Blatter has argued against them. Here is an example (in my opinion) of a sports administrator who really would do everyone a favour by being caught in a London dungeon with five hookers and the script from 'Allo 'Allo.
The NFL's judgement supremacy comes at a price, though, and the game is disrupted while all the calls are made. However in a sport where even the advertisers can call a time-out, nobody is that much fussed. In F1, all the judgements can be made while the race is going on, whether by the race director Charlie Whiting, or the stewards posting up things they're going to look at after the race.
Last season Charlie Whiting had a blinder, putting out Safety Cars when they were needed, and making some brilliant judgement calls to get through the Japanese Grand Prix. He even saved Kimi Raikkonen's World Championship. Without the quiet message from Whiting to Ferrari boss Jean Todt (after Ferrari failed to check their e.mail) to get both Raikkonen and Massa in to change tyres from inters to full wets at the start of the race, he would have had to black flag them.
This season it was surprising that he red-flagged Qualifying after the Takuma Sato accident in Bahrain, but the only other bone of contention has come from the stewards and the brief they have to investigate 'avoidable accidents'. When is avoidable, avoidable?
In Bahrain, they only had two big accidents to look at and they passed on both of those.
Drivers with the experience of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso should avoid hitting each other accelerating away from a corner. When you're diving into a braking zone you have so little control of a car - not so going out the other side. What we would have liked them to do is investigate the Lewis vs Fernando impact and give us the verdict, just so we know.
Does the McLaren have after-burners fitted (that somehow Lewis couldn't deploy when he was behind the Force-India). Has the Renault got a flat-spot in its acceleration curve? What part did Alonso's little sideways jink play? It was reminiscent of his sideway shimmy at the start of the Belgian GP in Spa. If his acceleration was flat, did he dab the brakes with his left foot?
These could be so easily cleared up by the stewards doing something, even if the results showed nothing at all.
Compared to football, though, we're not complaining. ITV are surrendering the F1 coverage because they need more money to pay for their continued coverage of the European Champion's League. Judging by some of the games we've had to endure this season and the quality of the refereeing they might as well have spent it on the National Lottery.
Andrew Davies
This post has been edited by james2306: Apr 14 2008, 03:05 PM
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