A Short History Of Goal Line Controversy

With debate again raging over whether the time has come to introduce goal line technology, Patgod looks back over the knotty history of this potatoey hot thorn.

The first recorded goal line incident was in the annual Ashbourne Shrove Tuesday game in 1628. After 9 hours of mass brawling and associated bodily harm, the ‘Up’ team managed to move the ball to within inches of the ‘Down’ goal. One final push saw a goal claimed but the linesman was unsighted by several hundred people being in the way, and the goal wasn’t given. As a consequence the Up team beat the poor linesman to death and forfeited the match.

Arbroath’s 19th century defeat of Bon Accord in the Scottish Cup is remembered for the record 36-0 scoreline, but a lesser known fact is the post match claim by the Bon Accord boss, Finlay Dalglish, that the game turned on his side being denied a perfectly valid goal. How the officials didn’t see it is beyond me, he said, adding that at 1-23 they would have been right back in the game. He called for the introduction of the new marvel of photography to settle such issues once and for all. However, as this would have required everyone to stand absolutely motionless for 5 minutes waiting for the flash each time the ball threatened to cross the line, there were fears that it would slow down the game.

Bon Accord go so close









Apart from a notorious incident at Christmas 1914 (the ‘did it cross the Siegfried line’ controversy) the issue receded for the next few decades. This was partly because the heavy rain soaked leather ball travelled so slowly across the glutinously muddy playing surface, disputes were rare. And partly because the football phone in had yet to be invented.

However then came the World Cup Final of 1966 and the daddy incident of them all, as Geoff Hurst’s shot hit the bar and... and...? Everything rested on the view of the Russian linesman. On the one hand, it did happen very fast and he couldn’t be entirely sure. But then he remembered Stalingrad.

Quit complaining Fritz – it was clearly in











Such incidents continued to be regarded as part and parcel of the game until round about 2005, when all Premiership managers became contractually obliged to review every non-win through the filter of refereeing errors that cost them the game. Then Germany got their own back when a Uruguayan linesman (probably the descendant of an escaped Nazi – we’ll check it out) failed to spot Lampard’s would be equaliser.

Ever since not a month has gone by without a similar incident rocking the world of football to its foundations, meaning that either match officials are collectively inept, or the world of football is quite wobbly. Stand by for robo-ball, with an embedded chip that pings a signal to the ref if it crosses the line. No uncertainty. No ‘we wuz robbed’. How boring.