In the time it took for Sunday's Scottish Cup quarter-final match officials to calm things down, come together and then get things horribly wrong a television official could have watched a replay and ensured that they got the right men for the right offences.

To place the difficulty confronted by those who must make snap decisions on these matters on a solitary live look at incidents while, incidentally, exerting themselves to keep up with play, those whose job it is, from the press box, to pass judgement on all that takes field of play, spent most of the remainder of the half debating what had actually taken place, such was the frenzied nature of a four man clash in which legs were entwined and boots appeared to be flying.

By half-time, courtesy of checks with fuzzy images on mobile 'phones, tablets and lap-tops, allied to calls to those with a better view of HD television monitors, we all had a decent handle on things and could duly report what had actually happened, before commenting upon the consequences and implications of how it was dealt with.

However the question for football's authorities and followers of the sport in general is whether they want to continue to unnecessarily hang match officials out to dry because it need not be so.

It is understandable that concerns have been raised about the potential impact on what is among the most free-flowing of sports, but we are not talking about bringing in television officials to double check every throw-in or free kick.

What is required is an opportunity to ensure that key moments in matches, those involving the scoring of goals or the dismissal of players, are dealt with properly. Mistaken identity, claims of blatant handball, head butts, kicks and punches can all be clearly seen in a football match with everything so much more visible than is frequently the case in rugby matches where umpteen bodies are piled upon one another.

Nor is the use of technology something that needs to take the referee out of the equation. In rugby the presence of big screens in the stadium means the man in charge, particularly when it is Welshman Nigel Owens, frequently makes a decision based on a replay before the TV official has reached his conclusion.

In American Football that has been further developed with a hooded monitor available at the side of the pitch to let the chief referee have a second look at his own decisions if he is in any way worried.

The other option, as also demonstrated in American football, would be to have far more officials around the pitch, given clear areas of responsibility to focus upon when incidents happen and wired up but only empowered to intervene when asked or when they see something with the most serious implications that has been missed in the course of play.

Either way mistakes will still be made and in this Calcutta Cup week, for all that his comeback performance was truly stellar on the occasion in question, I still cannot believe that TV reply officials could not see just how much of Jonny Wilkinson was off the pitch before he touched down the score that allowed him to register a rare "Grand Slam" of a try, conversion, drop goal and penalty in the crushing win over Scotland a few years back.

This week at Cricket's World Cup, too, there have been hugely contentious calls affecting teams from these islands in decisive moments, but reducing those would be easily dealt with in football by the same mechanism as is programmed into the "Hawkeye" machine, which decrees that the closest calls remain with the on-field call.

On which note when it comes to off-side goals, again the most obvious mistakes are evident by the time the scorer has unpeeled himself from supporters or got his shirt back on.

Of course football could carry on as it is now, maximising the scope for human error on the basis, as some have bizarrely argued, that mistakes by officials are among the joys of the sport.

If so, however, the only conclusion would be that there is some perverse need to manufacture controversy by ensuring that glaring mistakes are made.

If so, with those who choose to officiate in sport already generally, rightly or wrongly, considered to be a strange breed, the logical conclusion is that it will increasingly lead to people with peculiar outlooks, bordering on sociopathic tendencies, taking charge of matches since only those who can cope with being set up to fail, then pilloried for doing so.

There are easy measures available that can minimise the obvious errors and the events of last Sunday only reinforced the need to apply them.