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John Hughes- “VAR would have overturned that decision”

Dunfermline manager John Hughes believes that if there was VAR last Saturday at Hamilton the decision to red card captain Graham Dorrans and award the home side a penalty kick would have been overturned. So confident is he that the club has appealed against the red card and the case will be held on Wednesday.

VAR, or to give it the full name video assistant referee, exists specifically to minimize human errors causing substantial influence on match results. The Pars boss said:-

“I’m in favour of anything that helps Scottish football and anything that helps referees. We are all in this together. I`m all for anything that makes it a better spectacle and a better game.”

Operating under the philosophy of "minimal interference, maximum benefit", VAR system seeks to provide a way for "clear and obvious errors" and "serious missed incidents" to be corrected. In the absence of the technology, match referee David Munro deemed it was a handball but Hughes would disagree and would classify it in the clear and obvious error category:-

“Clearly everybody can see that it`s not handball. So we are hopeful. There is good video footage and all that stuff so we have our fingers crossed. It is part-and-parcel of football. We have all been there, we have all made mistakes. If the referee says that it`s handball then he obviously hasn`t seen it. I don’t even think that it’s a free kick.

“We have all been in those sorts of situations. The Hamilton players were all claiming for it. I think he has taken a guess that it hit his arm. His linesman could have helped him out a bit but there is nothing we can do about it now. It is done and dusted and it cost us the game. We need to move on.”

While VAR is used in around 50 leagues around the world there are only a handful of second tier leagues where it is used. Head of Referee Operations, at the Scottish Football Association Crawford Allan has revealed the SFA hope to introduce VAR to Scottish football by the end of 2022.

The former whistler reckons it could be in place for the restart of the 2022/23 season after the World Cup in Qatar, which is due to finish in December. Support for the use of VAR in Scottish football has been voiced this season by Hearts Robbie Neilson and Dundee United’s Tam Courts and the Pars boss is the latest with him adding a request for the referee’s decision to be an audible addition:-

“If that is the way forward then I am all for it. As long as it`s for the betterment of the game. We were actually talking about what happens at the rugby, where you can hear the referees and hear why they are giving decisions.”

Dom Thomas missed Saturday’s match and John Hughes revealed the conclusion reached after his 25 year old midfielder had a scan on his knee.

“He has a tear in his meniscus and, to be fair to Dom, he has been playing with it. It has flared up and started to be a problem. We had it scanned the other day and the doctor agrees with what showed up in the scan.

“He will go for a tidy-up operation as soon as possible - hopefully within the next couple of days. It would be unfair to put an exact timeframe on it right now. He was missed on Saturday and I think you could see that.”

From having a full complement of players to select from Dunfermline now have a further two sidelined. Players who have not trained this week are Iain Wilson who has a heel problem and Reece Cole is out with a dead leg but the manager is optimistic that with another week’s training Rhys Breen should be fit for the weekend.

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