Crossing A Line

This morning’s news that goal line technology could be used in the Premier League within the next 12 months is an interesting development.

Alex Horne, the General Secretary of the FA, made the announcement this morning, saying: It's possible we could see [goal-line technology] in the Premier League as early as 2012-13.”

Previously he had said that that such a move was “unlikely” before 2013 given that the technology wouldn’t be in place in time.

Along with Horne’s announcement, at which he also trotted out the usual phrases, such as “I think goal-line technology would be a huge boost for the game” and “For years we've thought this was a good addition to referees' armoury,” before adding: “It's easy to make mistakes and we've all seen examples where the referee and assistant referee can't see if a ball has crossed the line or not. We need to support them in decision-making.”

The problem is, I can’t help feeling, that the whole thing is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. How many instances of this would have been avoided over the years? There was the famous one at Old Trafford a few seasons ago when Roy Carroll dropped Pedro Mendes’ shot over the line, there was an incident last season with a last minute header at Stoke, and of course there was that “goal” that Frank Lampard scored in the World Cup against Germany.

The point I am making here is that there aren’t a lot of these incidents. It’s not exactly going to do a great deal to the game – and is it actually solving a problem that doesn’t actually exist?

Clearly the people behind the trials that are taking place don’t think so. Harry Barnes and David Parden have developed a system that involves a signal being sent to the referee’s wrist when the ball crosses the line. The system has been 14 years in the development, apparently after Bolton Wanderers went down as a result of a Gerry Taggart goal that should have counted not being given.

This neglects a very important point though and one which I believe still holds true. Bolton Wanderers did not go down in 1997 because one goal wasn’t given. Bolton Wanderers went down because their performances in the season as a whole weren’t good enough.

And the system isn’t cheap either. Costing £100,000 for a set of two goals. Self evidently therefore it is only going to happen in the Premier League. This creates a system where the game is refereed differently depending on how much money your team has. One of the things I love about football is that from the park to the pro’s the rules are the same. This changes that.

We already have something similar in cricket. In fact it is even worse. If I go and watch a cricket match in the T20 or Pro40 competitions and its on Sky they have a TV umpire who reviews decisions. If I go the next week and it’s not a televised game then there is no fourth official.

Surely it is even more wrong to have games in the same competition officiated differently then it is to have something uniform across the division, which is at least what will happen in the Premier League.

My other concern on this is that it might be the start of something bigger – how long before football follows rugby, cricket and tennis and brings in referrals for this, than and the other. I believe this to be entirely the wrong course of action for football to take and implore the authorities to think very, very carefully before making these nets compulsory