VAR has been the dominant talking point from the 2017 Confederations Cup, or the only talking point to be totally honest, but shortly after Damien Duff claimed that he believed VAR would be helpful if we got the early problems sorted out, we were given an example as to why, at the moment, it's completely pointless.
Chile's Gonzalo Jara planted a nasty elbow on the jaw of Timo Werner in the second half of the Confederations Cup, and as the referee wasn't sure as to what he saw, he watched the replays before showing a yellow card.
Incredibly, Jara sarcastically applauded this decision, for which he should then have been sent off, but the replays show that there was no question he should have walked anyway.
In the RTÉ studio, Richie Sadlier called on his own experiences of both giving and receiving elbows during his career, and summed up exactly why it was a bad mistake.
There was absolutely no need for the elbow in that challenge, it was a nasty shot, and the fact that the referee watched the replays before showing a yellow card is utterly baffling.
At that stage in the game we had already spent 5-10 minutes waiting for the VAR to communicate with the officials on the pitch for various incidents, so to take more time out only to get the decision wrong is infuriating. It begs the question, what actually is the point?
FIFA have a long way to go before this is ready to use in a World Cup.
