Football can be magnificent sometimes. Mere minutes after QPR had entered the dressing room at half time fuming with the injustice of a lineman wrongly deciding that Clint Hill's header had not cross the line, they then get the rub of the green over an offside decision that sees Djibril Cisse equalise against Bolton. In the blink of an eye the discussion moves from Goal Line Technology (GLT) to general refereeing incompetence, but if anything this only goes to show the complexities over GLT.
Fifa has taken its time to come round to the idea of GLT and it was only after the recent International FA board meeting (IFAB) that Fifa gave the green light for two systems, Hawk-Eye (well known to Cricket and Tennis fans) and GoalRef, to undergo further testing with a view to testing them in the 2013-14 season. The English Premier League has indicated they are more than ready to embrace GLT but in analysing the two systems it is easy to see why officials favour the GoalRef option.
Fifa has two main criteria when it comes to GLT. It should be quick - the delay between the ball crossing the line and the ref being notified should be around 1-2 seconds - and it should be 100% accurate. Accuracy is naturally important - there can be no margin for error as allowed under the Hawk-Eye cricket system. The last thing we want is managers pedantically arguing over a 3mm error margin, and a 100% system will stop all argument (one hopes).
The decision relay time is massively important. In today's game at the Reebok, Gary Neville commented that it only took him and his fellow commentator ten to fifteen seconds to see that the ball had crossed the line - less time than it took the pedantic linesmen to insure that the rules of football were followed and corner kicks were taking from the right place. This brings up a key issue of GLT and indeed any kind of technology that assists referee decision making - open play.
Referees and linesmen can take their time insisting the ball is spotted in the right place, that players are the full ten yards behind the ball, or confer with their fellow officials over whether a penalty or free kick was rightly awarded, because the play is dead. In a fast game like football, where the play can switch from one end to the other in a matter of seconds, referees are not afforded the luxury of time and have to make decisions instantly. If the ball, in their opinion, does not go across the line, the defending team can be up the other end and score a goal before people like Gary Neville have had a chance to decide whether the initial effort was a goal.
Also, consider this: what if the attacking team had their shot, it wasn't given, but they were still on the attack in the penalty box? Should the ref stop play, kill all momentum and end the attacking team's chance only to find that the ball did not cross the line? When does the action stop? What happens when it does? The game is too fluid in open play to stop and check decisions.
The Hawk-Eye system uses camera's mounted around the ground and an optical recognition system (i.e. a glorified spot the ball competition) to compute if the ball goes over the line. Two issues arise with a camera system, the first being that there can be so many obstacles in the penalty box that there is a danger that the cameras would not be able to detect a goal when one went in. What if a keeper smothers the ball and with his body obscuring the ball he pulls it back from over the line? Goal Line decisions are relatively rare in football and this scenario is obviously even rarer still, but if it is a possibility it only needs to happen once on the big stage for all confidence in the system to disappear.
The other issue with using cameras, one which makes it unfavoured by officials and thankfully is absent in the Hawk-Eye case, is human interpretation.
Officials fear that the use of cameras for GLT will be the first step on the road to fourth officials hunched over TV screens and managers watching video replays and throwing in protests and challenges. You only need to listen to the interviews after one weekend of football to hear two managers or sets of players disagree vehemently over a seemingly obvious decision, and it does not matter whether the human error is made on the pitch, next to the dugouts or in a TV truck, it will not eliminate even half the wrong decisions and only extend the number of people managers can vent their anger at.
A recent presentation to journalists by the Professional Game Match Officals Board revealed that linesmen get 99% of offside decisions right. On Sky's Sunday Supplement host Brian Woolnough commented how tough their job was after he and his fellow scribes were given a test of three offside decisions and Brian got all three wrong! Stopping to examine camera footage would slow down the game immensely, and if offsides and penalty calls are afforded trial by television, where would it end? We would have micro-management of games to an absurd scale.
So on to the GoalRef system, which uses a magnetic field and an electronic device inside the ballto detect when a goal has been scored. What effect the device could have on the physics of the ball is something that will be tested, as well as what impact the striking on the ball will have on the device. If GoalRef passes these tests then it would be my prefered choice - it doesn't rely on any human error, would not open the door to potential troubling advances by technology, and should give a result that no one could argue with (but no doubt some technophobes will blame whatever system comesinto play, anything to remove the burden from their shoulders).
If it were not for Clint Hill's 'goal' or Cisse's offside equaliser what would Neville, Wilkins and company have talked about? What would Mark Hughes say in his post match press conference? Incidents like these are what football is all about. A bit of good luck here, a bit of bad luck there, it all evens itself out and the big teams get all the big decisions. Football is fluid and it is live and it is exciting, and technology should only be embraced if it is instant and not up to conjecture. Let's not turn football into a mechanic, robotic sport, a game resorted to set pieces all day long. There is already a sport like that anyway - American Football.
