Fast forward to the 99th minute and Burnley were leading 4-3 and Turf Moor were jubilant when Burns thought he had equalized with the final kick of the game.
Fans were left waiting for five minutes while VAR tried to determine whether the ball hit Barnes’ arm during the build-up to the goal.
After VAR ruled it was a “handball incident”, manager Shearer described the rules as “a mess on every level”.
“I hate the rules of handball. They messed up the rules, whether it was the decision today at Burnley or other controversial decisions this season.
“Now they say the Premier League is better than overseas, but I don’t buy that.
“It’s a mess in every sense of the word, there’s ‘intentional’, ‘proximate’, ‘natural’, ‘unnatural’, etc., there are so many ways to interpret things that it doesn’t suit your purpose.
“It doesn’t seem right and it’s unfair for fans to sit in the stadium for three minutes, four minutes or however long it took today at Turf Moor.”
He added: “I asked the five people in the room earlier if they were sure they were hit in the arm, and four of them said no. It would be very easy for the law to determine whether it was an intentional handball.”
Despite feeling defeated, Parker restrained his reaction to the decision.
“Maybe it’s a bit unfair. I haven’t looked back at it. I saw it on the big screen and I thought it looked like his hands were at his sides,” he said.
“I don’t want to say too much because I’m definitely going to be quoted and I could be wrong. It seems very, very harsh.
“In this day and age, we want perfection. Of course there are elements that make it so. I’ve never seen it, but offside is offside and if it’s a handball, it’s a handball.”
Former Premier League official Darren Cann said Barnes’ handball was an accident but “was not properly acknowledged”.
“Under handball law, if a player scores, even by accident, into the opponent’s goal immediately after the ball touches his hand or arm, it is a handball violation,” he said.
“Burns’ handball was an accident, but it was correctly prohibited under current law.
“Perhaps Mr Ifab, who we met by chance in Cardiff today to discuss the law changes, will one day return to a policy of only punishing intentional handballs, but until then accidental handballs by goalscorers will continue to be penalized.”