Football's most tedious discussion resurfaces

Yes, you have read this story in 17 different newspapers in the past 5 years, and yes it’s back again. For the umpteenth time in the history of the Premier League, the old row over goal-line technology has hit the surface once again.

This latest uproar comes courtesy of a truly hilarious and ridiculous incident during Crystal Palace’s match with Bristol City at the weekend. Hilarious because it happened to Neil Warnock, whom I dislike severly, and ridiculous because it was. Palace’s Freddie Sears effort flew past City custodian Dean Gerken and hit the stansion in the top corner of the net. However, referee Rob Shoebridge and his assistant, Chris Knowles, failed to realise what 14,000 other people did realise – that the ball had gone in the net. Dear oh dear. If we’ve learned that Arsene Wenger doesn’t in fact need to go to Specsavers, we’ve learnt that Messrs Shoebridge and Knowles need to take the Arsenal boss’ place.

City went on to win the game 1-0, and as you would expect, Warnock was furious and claimed his side has been “cheated”.

The incident brings back memories of similar incidents in recent years, most notably the Pedro Mendes ‘goal’. The now-Rangers man was playing for Spurs at the time in an important encounter at Old Trafford against Scumchester United. Mendes’ long-range lob beat United ‘keeper Roy Carroll and bounced at least 5 inches over the line, but neither referee nor assistant spotted it, despite Carroll’s obvious disappointment at conceeding the would-be wondergoal (he sat on the ground for about 10 seconds with his hands on his knees!).

Keith Hackett, the General Manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (easier done than said), is adamant that the use of goal-line techonology would be a positive step for the game.

“I think the major issue centres around the fact for a number of years PGMOB have been calling for goal-line technology to be introduced. In fairness the Premier League worked with Hawkeye to achieve a product that the Premier League wanted to put into an operation as an experiment with the full support of the Football League, Football Association, LMA and PFA. All the parties were in favour but, at the international board meeting in Gleneagles a year ago, FIFA and Sepp Blatter decided the experiment could not go ahead.”

I think that on such matters, and difficult decisions, levels of tedium should be taken into account and a decision should be based on that. Therefore, this case should have been decided at least 3 years ago, when the tedium levels hit more epidemic proportions that Swine Flu. Introduce bloody goal-line technology and lets talk about something more interesting. Mr. Blatter, are you reading?