And here’s my next article!

Would football benefit from Goal Line Technology?

By Aidan Parr

We’re just two weeks into the new Championship season, and already controversy reigns. Last Saturday saw Crystal Palace denied what seemed to be a cast iron goal in their game against Bristol City. Freddie Sears’ shot had beaten the keeper and hit the stanchion in the goal and bounced straight out again. Instead of awarding the goal, referee Rob Shoebridge awarded a goal kick.

This incident has sparked new questions over the lack of goal line technology in games, with the argument against them suggesting it would take too much time to make a judgement, thus disrupting the game too much. However, many advocates of the system can look towards rugby union and tennis as a prime example of how this kind of technology can help the game and ultimately provide the right result.

In rugby union, there often comes a time when the large mass of bodies throwing themselves around can block the officials’ view of the ball, at which point the referee can call for the video referee to make the call after viewing the incident from various angles. The judgement is then relayed back to the referee via a microphone/earpiece combination, and also to a big screen at the ground to inform the fans. The process takes a matter of minutes, saving a lot of time and ill feeling between the two teams.

In tennis it works slightly differently. If a player feels that the umpire has gotten a call wrong then he or she gets to challenge the decision, at which point a video referee is called in. Interestingly, each player gets a set number of challenges, preventing them from contesting every close point, so if they challenge and get it wrong, they lose a challenge for later in the game.

None of these sports have suffered from the introduction of the technology and it has since become as much a part of the game as the balls with which they are played, and although they cannot guarantee perfection (think back to the ‘Try that was’ in England’s semi final at the rugby world cup), they can at least preventthe scenes we saw last weekend.

Harry Redknapp said: “It’s the 21st century - how long since we put a man on the moon? And yet Fifa won’t let us have cameras on the goalposts?” Surely it’s only a matter of time now?

There ya go!

Should be another one coming soon!!