Hawk-Eye Heading For The Premiership

By: Daryl | July 29th, 2007

Roy Keane hawkeye Paul Hawkins has a contract to develop his Hawk-Eye thingamajiggy for future use in the Premiership. The system does not - repeat not - involve Roy Keane holding a bird’s beak over his eyeball (if anyone can explain that image, please do.) It’s more of a cameras and computers approach to ball tracking. He’s working with Reading’s academy side this season, presumably using the youngsters as test cases in an attempt to fine tune the system.

Hawkins told BBC Five Live “We have a contract with the Premier League to develop a system purely to resolve the dispute whether the ball crossed the line, purely for the referee and not for television. The process is to be evaluated by the Premier League and then by FIFA, if we jump those hurdles then the end aim is to have it installed in all Premier League grounds hopefully.”

In some cases it will resolve goal-line disputes that are impossible to decide definitively with the naked eye. In other cases (like Carlos Tevez’ non-goal against Blackburn last season when even a blind monkey could tell you it didn’t cross the line) it will prevent referees from making horrible mistakes.

But the big fear (and already ancient debate) is that using Hawk-Eye will mark the beginning of technology encroaching on football. The naysayers naysay that within a few years the Premiership will be like the NFL, with stoppages for video consultations every few minutes to decided who’s throw-in it is. The opposing argument is that if we’ve got the technology to help make decisions then why not use it? It works for cricket and tennis.

As usual, the correct is answer is moderation. The introduction of Hawk-Eye for just goal-line decisions would be worthwhile. Because goals are so important, it’s worth taking a little time over the decision. Hawk-Eye would just be an advanced method of the referee-linesman huddle when they get together to deliberate over a decision. Except in this case one of them is a computer with irrefutable evidence.