Scudamore Confident Hawk-Eye Will be a Success

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is confident that Hawk-Eye will be a success and improve English football.

Hawk-Eye was selected as the preferred Goal Line Technology (GLT) provider for the Premier League earlier in the year and has now been installed and tested in all 20 Premier League grounds ahead of the new season.

The company’s Goal Decision System was publicly demonstrated at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium on Thursday and Scudamore told Sky Sports News there will be no controversies.

An absolute decision

Scudamore said: “It’s going to be an absolute decision. There’ll be no argument – it’ll be fact and that’s for the good of the game.

“There are seven cameras at each goal, and it’s a very quick decision – within a second all the officials will know. The technical system will tell the referees and it’s very simple – it either will or won’t be over the line.

“If there was any doubt in my mind we wouldn’t be doing it at all there’s too much at stake.

“There is no goal-line incident in the 21-year history of the Premier League that this system wouldn’t have been able to identify. There were 31 incidents last year that could have benefited from this technology. It will work, it’s been fully tested.

“We’re in a very different situation (to cricket). This is not a review system, there’s no person reviewing anything. I don’t see that this system will lead to anything like the same discussions.”

Proud day

The inventor of Hawk-Eye said it was a proud day for him to unveil the technology ahead of the Premier League season.

Paul Hawkins said: “They want to get things right, and they’ve been the biggest supporters.”

Hawk-eye inventor Paul Hawkins said: “It’s a day of great pride and a day of great responsibility just to deliver the system to the Premier League, the FA and to football.

“The eyes of football will be watching and it needs to get off to a great start and deliver an accurate, reliable system that we know we can deliver.

“The system is as close to 100% as any piece of technology can ever be.

“We have a great track record in other sports for delivering accurate, reliable technology. Those sports trust us and we now have to build that reputation in football.

“Whether the ball goes over the line is 100% definitive which is why there is no human involved as in DRS in cricket.”