Referee for FA Cup game and VAR details

Peter Bankes has been confirmed as the man in the middle for Cardiff City's visit to Aston Villa in the FA Cup Fifth Round.

It's his first Cardiff City match of the season but has refereed Villa twice - their 1-1 draw with West Ham and their 2-1 win over Manchester City.

He has been in charge of 20 games this season - 16 in the Premier League, two in the Championship and two in the Carabao Cup.

He has shown 82 yellow cards and two red cards across those games - an average of 4.1 yellow cards per game.

VAR will also be in operation in this match.

Bankes will announce all VAR decisions to the stadium.

Semi automated offside is being trialled in all FA Cup Fifth Round ties at Premier League stadiums, so this will be used too.

What is semi-automated offside technology?

Semi-automated offside technology is a support tool that automates key elements of the offside decision-making process for the video assistant referee (VAR).

It will be used in close offside calls – to either confirm or recommend a change to the referee’s call on-field – as is currently the case with VAR.

To determine close offside calls, the VAR currently needs to work with replay operators (RO) to manually determine the "kick-point" for the offside decision and then "draw" calibrated lines with a crosshair on the relevant defender and attacker, using multiple camera angles.

Once the lines and kick-point are determined, an "offside" or "onside" decision is generated.

Semi-automated offside technology will suggest a "kick point" and automatically create offside lines on the second rear-most defender and the relevant attacker – saving significant time in determining whether a player is onside or offside.

Once the semi-automated offside technology-generated outcome has been reviewed and approved by the VAR, a decision visual will be automatically generated and distributed to fans in the stadium and to the media.

How does the system work?
The system uses up to 30 newly installed cameras mounted around Premier League stadiums – with several capturing footage at 100 frames per second, twice the frame rate of typical broadcast cameras.

The cameras track the exact movement of the ball as well as up to 10,000 surface "mesh" data points per player - meaning the technology will track to see if any attacking player involved in the build-up to any incident was offside.

These are then "flagged" automatically in SAOT software to the VAR and SAOT operator.

Thanks, Ned. Very informative

Let's hope the technology works better than the officials!

Did well I thought.

Arguably could have given us a penalty but in truth it would have been soft.

Refereed the game well and was always in control.

Not a difficult game to referee with no really bad challenges but handled everything well.