Football Australia’s Head of Referees Jon Moss has explained that IFAB protocols were the reason why a yellow card handed to Newcastle Jets’ Kota Mizunuma for simulation on Sunday was not rescinded, despite VAR finding an offside in the play prior to the incident.
In the 83rd minute of the Jets’ 2-1 loss to Wellington Phoenix, Mizunuma burst into the box and was seemingly clipped by defender Isaac Hughes, but was shown a caution by referee Alireza Faghani after going to ground, to the disbelief of the Japanese winger.
VAR intervened in the incident, finding the Jets attacker was offside in the build-up, however the yellow card was allowed to stand, confusing players, fans and commentators.
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“It’s a really unusual incident,” Moss told aleagues.com.au.
“The ball gets played over the top. The referee makes a judgment that the player has dived, an act of simulation, and cautions him.
“So the VAR looks at it to determine whether the simulation is correct or whether it should be a penalty, and determines it is going to be a penalty and informs the referee.
“But as always, they just need to check the build-up to the goal, the attacking phase of play, to see whether the player, when the ball was played over, was in an offside position.
“Once you do that, they see that the player is, in fact, offside – this is where the protocol for VAR is limited somewhat, because what we can’t do then is rescind the yellow card even though we know it’s incorrect.
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“All the VAR can say to the on-field team is that it is an offside.
“They can’t make a judgment, because that would be re-refereeing the game, and therefore we start with the offside position and the game continues.”
He continued: “There are only certain things that VAR can intervene on; yellow cards aren’t one of those things.
“Had it not been offside, the referee would have gone to the screen, you would have seen it wasn’t on an on-field review, it wasn’t a penalty, it wasn’t simulation, we’d have awarded a penalty and rescinded the yellow card.
“But because the offence happens before that is the offside, the VAR then can’t intervene on the yellow card offence.”
Speaking after the match, Jets boss Rob Stanton said he was ‘disappointed the yellow wasn’t removed’, pondering ‘what if he got another yellow card for something silly? He’s off’.
On Paramount+’s broadcast of the match, commentator Andy Harper labelled the fact the referee could not rescind the yellow card ‘illogical’.
Moss responded: “It’s not ideal, because what we don’t want is players getting incorrectly cautioned.
“I think if it had been a second yellow card, we would have made sure that the referee went to the screen to have a look at it, because what we don’t want is players being sent off incorrectly.
“VAR is limited in what it can do. What we don’t want is the VAR re-refereeing the game. That’s what the stakeholders have told us, you want the on-field referee to make a call.
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“The only way that the referee could rescind that yellow card is if he went to the screen to have a look at it as part of a penalty check, and then was able to make a judgment on that.
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“But in this scenario, because there was a factual offside decision, we just simply start with the offside (and an) indirect free kick, as we have done all season with factual offside decisions.
“… We are just simply following the IFAB protocol on this one, which is not ideal, because I think what frustrated people on Sunday was that they didn’t know what was going on.
“The whole purpose of what we’ve done in Australia with the stadium announcements is to inform the public exactly what’s going on. I think we fell short of that on this occasion, but in our defense, we were shackled by the IFAB conventions in terms of our protocol.”
Moving forward, Moss said he’d like to see referees use Live VAR to address crowds in stadium and on broadcast to explain decisions in situations like this, even when the referee hasn’t needed to go to the screen and review a decision themselves.
“In a perfect world, we would have brought the referee over to the screen, let him have a look at it,” the former Premier League referee explained.
“He would have seen that it wasn’t a penalty, that there was an offside decision.
“Before that, he would have gone and rescinded the yellow card, gone and made an announcement to say, ‘look, I made a mistake in terms of the simulation, I’ve rescinded that yellow card. It would have been a penalty. However, in the build up to the penalty scenario, there is an offside offense, and therefore we will restart with an indirect free kick for offside’.
“Because we couldn’t do that, the public was looking at the screen thinking, ‘well, that’s definitely a penalty. Why has he not overturned it?’
“Then there’s miscommunication. It makes it difficult for us to educate people … if that had been the case and we could have announced that, gone through that scenario, everyone would have said, ’ah, right, great.’
“So VAR would have corrected the penalty, the simulation would have given the penalty, but it’s offside beforehand, and everyone would have accepted that.”
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He continued: “I think it’s more the educational piece. I think what would have been better for us, and I’ve said to (the referees), is there has to be a factual field review, so you can tell the public why you’ve done it.
“You don’t need to go to the screen.
“Look, I’m restarting with the offside because we would have awarded the penalty, but in the build up, there’s an offside offence. So I think that’s the educational piece for the crowd watching the game, it would have been far more beneficial.”
