GAA’s bizarre u-turn on Hawk-Eye
January 13: Croke Park release a statement denying Hawk-Eye will be trialled on St Patrick’s Day, stating it did not envisage any such system would be used for the finals “or for games in the 2011 season”.
February 22: GAA President Christy Cooney says the Association hope to trial Hawk-Eye in a game in Croke Park in the near future — “we are looking at the Dublin games at the moment,” said Cooney.
In the space of less than six weeks, the GAA has dramatically changed its tune on Hawk-Eye. Why is the question? Why deny Hawk-Eye was being trialled in Croke Park only to then confirm it would be?
While the March 17 date appears to be incorrect (information which was incidentally provided by Hawk-Eye themselves), for the GAA to categorically deny any plans to use the technology this year only to then confirm they intend to seems more than a mite rich.
So how do the GAA explain their u-turn? Semantics, it seems. The use of the phrase “trial run” in our piece last month is apparently far removed from the “trial” uttered by Cooney on Tuesday.
From speaking to officials in Croke Park, one of their main gripes with our report is the alleged inference the technology would assist the referees and their match officials to distinguish contestable scores from wides.
Nowhere in the piece is there that suggestion. For such score detection to be used, it would require a number of rule changes and Congress would have to vote on it.
The trial run we wrote of was exactly that — a test of performance. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yet the forthcoming experiment seems to be more than just that. On Tuesday, Cooney revealed the referee will be involved in the Hawk-Eye trial. “We will use this game for a proper trial and the referee will be linked up as well,” he revealed.
Again, the question is why? Why would the referee be in communication with the Hawk-Eye staff other than to be made aware of their findings? Surely that would contravene a whole series of rules.
Given how costly it is to install and run Hawk-Eye technology, it’s understandable why the GAA are ultra-sensitive about introducing it.
While a corporate sponsor for the equipment may neutralise the expense of utilising the service, it’s not going to be available for league games and hardly for lesser inter-county games.
It is the sexy option to help rid the sport of such controversies such as Ben O’Connor’s disputed free in last year’s Munster SHC final or Alan Smith’s point-that-never-was in Kildare’s All-Ireland SFC semi-final defeat to Down. However, it is a solution restricted to the elite, an answer that will remain out of reach for the vast majority of players. Still, that doesn’t explain why the GAA completed a u-turn on the subject earlier this week.
Why their left-hand didn’t know what their right hand had already done. When is a trial run not a trial run? When the GAA says it isn’t.
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