HawkEye, the point detection technology that underwent fourteen months of trials before being introduced in Croke Park in 2013 is nothing if not eccentric. Quite often, science and technology can seem cold, ruthless and forensically efficient. Not so HawkEye, which, a bit like HAL in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, appears to have developed its own personality traits. In the third minute of Sunday's Leinster senior football final, Diarmuid Connolly was denied Dublin's first score by data from eight high-speed cameras which triangulate the ball.HawkEye decided the ball would have hit the post, if that post had extended upwards by another few yards. Fair enough. Luckily, there wasn't much at stake in the sixty-ninth minute when HawkEye ruled out a Bernard Brogan point, which, bizarrely, appeared on the virtual replay as inside the posts. Those who were counting an extra point for Dublin were surprised when "NIL" was screened. All very peculiar. Most people enjoyed a chuckle. But if the match had been a close contest, with tensions running high, what then?
Football