GAA insist use of system not imminent

HAWK-EYE:THE GAA have again emphasised the use of Hawk-Eye's score detection technology, to be trialled at Croke Park during Dublin's football and hurling National League encounters against Down and Kilkenny in Croke Park this Saturday evening, is still a long way off any potentially wider implementation.

As indicated last week, it will not be part of the match-day scoring on Saturday, nor will the officials have the option to refer to it for confirmation of goals or points. Instead, it marks the first stage of feasibility testing expected to take several weeks, and will not be considered for implementation into law until 2012 Congress, at the earliest.

“This is the first step in the feasibility study, to see if the technology is even suitable for our games in the first place,” explained GAA communications manager Alan Milton. “With any technology like this you won’t know if it works until you try it.

“Only then can you consider it, and the related costs, etc. So we’re really only at base one, with a long way to go. I wouldn’t even call it a dummy run, because that will only happen when it’s actually part of the match-day apparatus.”

Saturday’s exercise, therefore, is mainly to determine the logistics of positioning and installation of equipment in Croke Park, and how it can be used in the context of both football and hurling.

Hawk-Eye operates off a computer system using the principles of triangulation, with four high-speed cameras: the system generates a graphic image of the ball’s path and playing area, which can provide accurate information to referees, judges, television viewers and coaches in near real-time.

It has been adopted by several sports, mainly professional cricket and tennis, to track the path of the ball and display a record of its most statistically likely path as a moving image to counteract human error – and in the context of football and hurling would only resolve issues relating to the ball or sliotar crossing the goal-line or bisecting the uprights for a point.