Limerick demand semi-final replay after Hawk-Eye blunder

The Limerick County Board have confirmed they will appeal the result of last Sunday's All-Ireland Minor Hurling Championship semi-final which was overshadowed by an incorrect decision by the Hawk-Eye score detection technology.

Limerick officials made the decision at a board meeting last night having discussed the incident from the Limerick minors' 0-23 to 0-20 extra-time defeat to Galway at Croke Park.

Barry Nash's first-minute point attempt was shown to have gone inside the right hand post on the Hawk-Eye graphic, but 'miss' came up on the screen next and referee Fergal Horgan duly ruled it as a wide.

It was a costly mistake for Limerick though as the sides finished level at the end of normal time (0-16 apiece), and Galway pushed on in extra-time to qualify for next month's All-Ireland decider against Waterford.

Hawk-Eye have since issued an apology over the 'human error' which led to the incorrect call and the GAA not using the system for Sunday afternoon's senior semi-final between Limerick and Clare.

Explaining how the blunder occurred, a statement from the Sony-backed company read: "During the game between Limerick and Galway, conflicting readings were displayed by the Hawk-Eye system.

"This was due to an error in match-day set up on the part of the Hawk-Eye team.

"All of the settings were adjusted to cater for hurling, bar one value for the Hill 16 end posts which was set for football."

This means that although the 3D graphic that showed the sliotar going just inside the post was correct, the technology set up to determine whether or not the sliotar would have touched the posts was using the values for the diameter of a football instead - thus Nash's effort was ruled a 'miss'.

Hawk-Eye apologised to 'the GAA and its supporters' and were keen to 'reassure them that the system will be fully reliable for all future games'.

Steve Carter, the managing director of Hawk-Eye Innovations, met with the representatives of the GAA at a hastily arranged meeting last night.

He explained the cause of the malfunction and the operational steps being taken, under his personal supervision, by the Hawk-Eye team to ensure there will be no repetition.

Despite initial suggestions that they were against the idea, the Limerick board will now lodge an appeal - "based on the failure of the Hawk-Eye score detection system"- to the Central Competitions Control Committee this morning.

"In the interests of fairness to all involved we will be not be making any further comment until the full process has been determined," their short statement concluded.

Limerick minor hurling manager Brian Ryan told Newstalk's 'Off The Ball' programme last night that he personally felt there should be a replay between the teams.

However, Galway boss Mattie Murphy is opposed to his county offering a replay, telling the Irish Examiner: "To be honest, it's something that is out of our hands well and truly. It wouldn't be the manager who would be making that call. It would be up to the powers-that-be.

"But if you go back over the game, there was another 59 minutes and 30 seconds-plus of normal time and then 20 minutes of extra-time after that incident.

"The what-ifs...you can't go down that road. We had our captain (Paul Killeen) put off with 10 or 12 minutes to go in last year's semi-final and we subsequently got one of the cards rescinded.

"But it was no good to us and Tipperary went on to win the All-Ireland. Would we have won? I don't know. Neither would anybody else."