The Times:
Goalline controversies could become a thing of the past after the Premier League declared the HawkEye technology ready for inspection by Fifa. The camera-based system could end the days of contested decisions like the Geoff Hurst shot off the underside of the crossbar at the 1966 World Cup final or Liverpool's "phantom goal", which knocked Chelsea out of the Champions League semi-finals two years ago.
HawkEye already has a prominent place in cricket and tennis, and the Winchester-based company is confident that it will soon be adopted by football. After successful tests at Reading's training ground, fully-automated cameras and computers are to be installed inside a Premier League stadium. Members of the International Football Association Board, which governs the laws of the game, will be invited to judge it against the rival micro-chip-based technology of adidas and Cairos, the German firm.
Dr Paul Hawkins, the founder of HawkEye, believes that the micro-chip could be susceptible to wet weather or dislodgement - and perhaps even outside interference - and he believes that his own system has significant advantages, not least that it has already been tested in other high-pro-file sports.
Tennis has adopted the technology for contested line-calls and, while Roger Federer angrily insisted that HawkEye made a mistake during his victory in the men's final at Wimbledon this year, the system looks certain to become even more prominent.
Hawkins revealed that he was in discussions with the cricket authorities about introducing a similar appeal system for leg-befores where captains could refer a number of close decisions to HawkEye, rationed according to the the number of incorrect challenges.
And while recognising that football supporters would not tolerate long interruptions, he suggested that managers might one day be allowed to contest a number of offside decisions once the technology had been shown to work on the goalline.
Six cameras per end will be installed up in the stands, at different angles. Hawkins admits that his system falls down if the ball is completely obscured - it needs to be 25 per cent visible to be foolproof - but claims that months of tests and ransacking of archives has shown that it works on just about every occasion. "We have a problem if the goalkeeper has the ball stuffed up his shirt," he said, "but the technology can also draw findings from knowing where the ball is not."
The IFAB has insisted that a goal must be signalled instantaneously to the officials and while the Premier League, which is helping to finance the project, has said that five seconds would be acceptable, HawkEye claims to have it down to half a second. The plan is for the referee to hear a distinct beep through his ear-piece.