Time For Technology!

I’ve been one of those, who is a ‘traditionalist’ I must confess, who wasn’t sure if technology should come into the game? However it’s happened in the Premier League with goal line technology now in play.

There’s talk of video replays being used for other things too, such as dodgy offside calls for goals!

I’m not sure just how far down this line of technology we should go but perhaps it’s time for the Football League to follow suit from the Premier League and add the goal line technology as this has been proven to work in the topflight.

Gary Bowyer, in light of Blackburn being clearly denied a goal in the defeat at Fulham, certainly believes it’s time for this to happen as ‘the rewards are massive’ and calls can be the difference between massive (financial) success and failure….I suppose between people keeping jobs too?

Speaking after the two-one defeat at Craven Cottage, the BBC has Bowyer as saying.

‘There’s a massive prize in this league at the end of the season. The rewards are massive, yet we haven’t got technology in this league. Hopefully this is an opportunity for the powers that be to do something about it.

‘Cricket doesn’t just have it at one game, tennis is not just at Wimbledon. They are open-minded, and the powers that be need to know it would make the game better. People are banging the drum and today is a great example, an opportunity to do something for the good of the game.

‘We are in the professional game. For the amount of money at stake why can’t it go all the way through the League?’

A major reservation of mine when it came to the introduction of goal line technology was the fact this couldn’t be introduced across the board in football, obviously down to the costs involved? If it was going to be used at one level you feel it needs to be used at all levels but not all clubs or organisations will agree.

The Premier League, yet not the Football League, having this technology is just another example of the ‘us and them’ mentality in football these days and how detached from football the topflight has become!

Then again if the Football League does bring this in is it a financially viable option in the Championship but not League 1 or League 2? Clubs at those levels, and the Non-League below that, will argue that financial rewards are as great to them for these calls to be right to warrant this technology too but as with most thing in life it’ll ‘come down to money.’

You tend to find it hard to think the funds aren’t available at Football League level, certainly in the Championship, for this shift to modern technology not to be used….

Technically that failure to give Grant Hanley his goal, as Jamie O’Hara looked to clear the ball away, cost Blackburn a point, how costly that will prove to be at the end of the season only time will tell?

But things do tend to ‘even themselves up’ don’t they and as much as that was the ultimate reason on Sunday why Rovers lost was it really the ‘real reason’ they lost….if that makes sense!