Australia offered up as goal-line guinea pigs
Reuters - Thursday 17 February 2011, 09:58
SYDNEY - Australia would be willing guinea
pigs for goal-line technology, the country's football federation
chief said on Thursday.
Football Federation Australia boss Ben Buckley offered the
A-League as an official testing ground for the technology should
the global governing body FIFA take that route.
Results of initial tests would be examined by the
International Football Association Board (IFAB), next month,
Sydney's Daily Telegraph said.
"I think it's something we should be open-minded about, and
Australia would be a good place to test it," Buckley told the
newspaper.
"Clearly we would need to discuss the logistics of it, but
we would like to make the offer if that's the path FIFA decide
to go down.
"We believe the infrastructure of the league is of a high
enough quality to give it a meaningful trial. As a competition
we took the initiative on using video technology to penalise
simulation retrospectively, and pleasingly you now see very,
very little of that in our game.
"Everyone wants to see the correct decisions made by the
officials, and this seems to be a way of supporting them in
that."
Opponents of goalline technology, including FIFA president
Sepp Blatter, say its use would break up the rhythm of a match.
It is an emotive topic, however, and the clamour for reform
erupted again last year when England were denied a goal against
Germany at the World Cup when Frank Lampard's shot clearly
crossed the line.