[WakeyTerrier]

by the way, I don't blame the ref. He only see's what he sees and tries to ref the game the best he can

Well same here but.........

That's what VAR is there for!

Agreed It's VAR where the blame lies, I can't for the life in me understand why the second penalty shout wasn't even checked.

[Devongone]

It isn't actually the mechanics of VAR so much as the distant ref' looking at the Video and his strength of belief that his potential re-interpretation of an incident will not make him look like an idiot in front of a colleague (especially one as respected and long-serving as Jon Moss in his farewell game) if he sends that senior colleague to view it on-screen.

By its very nature VAR tempts the referee with a tight decision to give nothing in the belief that VAR will intervene if necessary. When VAR chooses to send him to take a more considered view he then almost always changes his decision.

VAR is prone to human frailty like refereeing at all non-VAR levels of football, it just reveals itself in different ways.

Toffolo was trying to win a penalty. That is neither cheating, nor morally wrong. He is simply trying to tempt in a defender to bring him down. If he hadn't gone down quite so dramatically then I'm guessing the penalty would have been awarded, but he made his fall a bigger incident than the actual contact which DID occur. So despite the contact he didn't get the penalty, ostensibly for bad acting ..........

VAR isn't like Hawkeye at tennis. It doesn't relay fact. It allows the opportunity to re-interpret fact, but if the human eye and decision-making process can get it wrong once there's every reason for it to repeat the error. After all a respected colleague has already made one decision by either commission, or omission.

[Lord Snooty]

Nice report online today about Sorba and Carlos on the train. Talking to fans and signing autographs.

Carlos even helping a woman on with a pram. Aaaw, what a nice bloke.

[Lord Snooty]

And Lee Nicholls wins the Hargreaves Player of the Season award. No surprise there then. That should give you an explanation as to why we've done so well without particularly looking that good.

Sorba and Lewis runners up.

Nicho is the first keeper to win it since Nico in 1999.

[WakeyTerrier]

Some of the stuff on social media is pretty embarrassing to be honest.

Yes the Ref made a mistake, possibly 2 but not for one minute do i think he tried to cheat us/. We have Town supporters targeting his business giving it bad reviews out of nothing more than bitterness. For crying out loud, he will have people working in that shop that have nothing to do with his Refereeing, they probably earn the minimum wage and need that job and we have a bunch of idiots trying to ruin his business...IDIOTS!

Time for everyone to move on

[jjamez]

agreed wakey, i'm disappointed in his performance and that of the VAR people, certainly and I do still feel a touch flat from the game on sunday, but that is also down to our performance and not just the ref.

i'm also not too disappointed as it also means that we are in a league that we can compete in, hopefully we make the right signings and go again, its a tough league once again and I hope we don't do a Barnsley and have the hang over of a failed play off campaign.

i'm just waiting for the retained list and the signings of the summer

[HerefordBull]

Well said WT. Social Media has a lot to answer for at times.

Finally got round to seeing the replays of the penalty shouts for Huddersfield and can see why at the speed of the game the ref did not give them. Have seen them given for less mind you and also seen refs give the second when thinking he may have made an error on the first.

From certain angles of replay I couldn't see much contact on the first but from others I could see the touch. Perhaps if he hadn't gone down with such flamboyance he'd have stood more chance. The second I thought the Forest guy was more in the back of your lad, certainly not shoulder to shoulder and was a more obvious "foul".

Still cannot see why VAR is not used to better effect and has not been the saviour of controversy in the modern game...........down to the people making the decisions in the VAR studio I suppose and their bias!

[Devongone]

I do think one of VAR's major problems is that it is manned solely by a referee with ambitions in refereeing, who is both a colleague and maybe even rival for big games of the man in the middle. Surely it should be a respected retired from actual physical refereeing man or woman?

The "clear and obvious" dictum is also a problem. It means the VAR is telling the man in the middle "I think you got it wrong". Shouldn't he be able to say, "It's a really tight one, you may want to view it again ..." and then it might not be an absolute cert' that the ref' is going to overturn his original decision. His VAR is actually helping HIM to get it right.

The rules aren't helping either. Offside is now a farce. Assistants don't raise flags, so if play isn't stopped your team might win a corner despite having had two of its forward players clearly in offside positions. Your team scores from the corner, the opposition has a conniption fit. And handball has become a joke too. Why aren't the two guiding principles just whether it is deliberate or accidental, and whether the player or team gained an advantage they wouldn't otherwise have had? Unnatural position, ollocks! I'm waiting for the first person with Tourette's to concede a penalty for hands due to an involuntary movement. And as for corner kicks, just don't get me started, five minutes to go 1-0 up bring on a few specialist wrestlers to keep hold of the opposition danger men!

And if that weren't enough, 99% of the players out there think cheating is okay and even pundits and commentators will give the nod to taking one for the team and trying it on, writhing and screaming when hardly touched. The true value of sport is learning to take the rough with the smooth, playing within the rules and respecting your opponent. None of those now apply in sport or life, so let's threaten to bomb Harry Maguire, smash Jon Moss's shop window, trip Martin Atkinson's missus up in the supermarket ...... but that's people for you, it's just that now we all have more access to each other and can broadcast our idiot anger far and wide. And the impulse isn't new. When I played amateur men's football at a reasonable level 50 years ago I could name at least three opposition teams whose female supporters always took along their umbrellas to the game. If you were lucky they were only likely to try and trip your winger, if they took a dislike to you they weren't averse to giving any unwary opposition player a good whack.

The human element is the problem and the trouble is, however obnoxious, everyone involved classifies as peeps (just). Old bloke's rants ends.