Saturday 12 May 2012

Goal-line Technology

Much debate about goal-line-technology and what system football should turn to. Choice seems to be between the Hawkeye system similar to that used at Wimbledon or the GoalRef technology that sees a microchip inside the ball.
The present problem seems to be that the action happens so quick that the human eye of the referee cannot see with 100% accuracy whether the ball has crossed the line or not. We have seen many examples of the referee deciding he saw one thing only for them to be proved wrong later when the boys in the studio look at it from every angle.
Personally, i enjoy the human error part of it, my team have scored goals that should never have been as i have seen goals scored against us which should never have counted and my worry is that it will quickly creep from the game being paused while the referee looks at whether the ball crossed the goal-line to whether it was a penalty or a red card and we will be stopping and starting all game long.
Now, as a few people have pointed out but have been ignored, the large majority of these incidents seem to occur when the ball comes down off the crossbar and the crossbar is round. Would a ball come down like that if it was bouncing off a flat surface, such as a square crossbar?
I'm no expert in geometry but wouldn't it be almost impossible for a football to hit the bottom of a square bar and come straight down as it does when hitting the underside of a round bar? It would just skim off and carry on or hit the edge and come out. If i'm wrong then how about a triangle with the point at the bottom so it has very little surface area that won't force the ball into the goal or away from it? Even a hexagon shape would work.
So instead of spending millions installing technology to tell us whether it was a goal or not and force games to stop and start, why not just go the low-tech and much cheaper option of just changing the shape of the crossbar?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

the angle of approach and the spin on the ball can cause it to deflect in odd ways... imagine the round edge of the ball hitting the square edge of a flat bar, now add spin, now consider the ball could be dropping or rising and bounce in odd ways (david g ways).

q

Cheezy said...

I bet the reason they're not considering 'squared off' goalposts is something to do with health & safety :)

As someone whose team absolutely f&cking never gets these goal line decisions going our way (not even when we hoof it 2 yards over the line at Old Trafford... or it hits John Terry's fat ar&e at Wembley and doesn't even come close to the line), I certainly support something being done.

The 'chip inside the ball' seems like something that we now have the technology to do, potentially without screwing it up (in the way that the 'DRS review' system has kinda screwed up cricket)...

Lucy said...

Unless you are directly under the bar and hoof it up against it Emile Heskey style, wouldn't the forward momentum always mean hitting a flat surface the ball would always carry on forward regardless of spin or angle? I mean, the ball would be moving in that direction anyway and hitting a flat surface wouldn't make it change direction that much to go straight downwards? Im not sure.

I would just go for just the crossbar being square, even Keiron Dyer couldn't hurt himself on that. I know they did a trial recently at some Hampshire Cup Final but i am not sure what system they used.

Anonymous said...

I would like to remind people on this forum that God is not mocked!

He knows whether your ball is a foul or if it isn't and the result is written down in the Doomsday Book which will decide whether you advance to heaven or hell.

Q, you are all right being an American and a Christian. Cheezy is clearly in grey territory.

Lucy, your place in Heaven is assured, my darling! You may end up a Saint, struggling as you do with various mischievous Philistines and heathens.

America, politically, is divided between those who think marriage should be between a man and a woman and those who don't care that their sheets get filthy.

Repent your sins. The Judgement Day cometh with the dawn.

Hallelujah and God Bless America!

Rev. Algernon.

Anonymous said...

david,

get professional help.

seriously.

q