ANOTHER VIEW

It occurred to me only recently that we look at football matches from a very different perspective nowadays. According to my memory, and therefore from the 1940s possibly until the 1960s - when a slow change began to take hold - the Saturday afternoon match was all about anticipation and tension, spectacle and drama. Each game was a theatrical performance enjoyed (or otherwise, depending on the final result) in its own right.
Today, the fluttering police Keep Out tapes, familiar to all watchers of TV cop shows, are being put in place well before each game is over. This is a crime scene, the fans and pundits seem to be saying. It requires forensic examination. Then a nano-second (or more likely, lots of nano-seconds) of action is placed under a microscope for repeated slo-mo scrutiny while team managements and pundits (and fans, too, if they can see the repeated video replays) sit in judgement. The ref got it right. The ref got it wrong. It should never have happened. And on and on.
One or two pundits, who usually make me want to grind my teeth, invariably say something like, 'Why did Boggins switch play to the left when he should have kept it on his right?' The answer is because he wanted to switch it, I suppose. And anyway, it doesn't matter. It's done. It's over.
Or they argue the toss as to whether Jones was actually off-side. 'He didn't look it. It was very tight. Could have gone either way.' Well, the linesman (or whatever they call them now) has given his decision. The ref has given his decision. So the matter is actually done and dusted.
The problem is that this increasingly forensic-style examination of the nuts and bolts of each game is also linked to strident calls for even more video intrusion, no doubt with managers having the right to stop play and call for a screen adjudication of a disputed incident. The difficult is that this would apply to some games and not others. For example, I don't suppose the Anglian Combination, or the Vanarama Conference North, or the Evo Stick Southern Premier would be able to do it; whereas soccer always used to pride itself that the same rules applied everywhere. Again, do fans really want such interruptions, some of them tactical, to the flow of the game?
There is another solution, of course, because the 'crime scene' approach, which is not duplicated in boxing or hockey, or even the theatre, but is to a degree in rugby, cricket and tennis, would be to stop the endless slo-mo replays. During the match, anyway. That at least would choke off much of the argy-bargy and waffle.
Ten differently angled views of the same 'controversial' incident serve only to stoke the fires of argument. Without immediately accessible screen replays all the 'controversy' nonsense would be over in seconds.
Some of the answers, therefore, appear simple. For example, ban all screen replays until at least an hour after each match has finished. Switch off the pundits, or at least turn down the sound. And stop the endless criticism of match officials. After all, they have a much better 'win' average (well over 90 per cent of their decisions are correct, so I believe) than the pundits, players and managers.
Then all you have to do is relax and enjoy the match.