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Hawk-Eye is in the second of a two-year pilot phase. INPHO/Lorraine O'Sullivan
Tech Talk

Paraic Duffy hopes to see Hawk-Eye in Semple Stadium 'sooner rather than later'

Thurles ground next in line if GAA bosses choose to continue with the score technology.

HAWK-EYE COULD BE rolled out to Semple Stadium as early as next year.

The lack of score detection technology in Thurles made headlines again after TV replays spotted two incorrect calls in Sunday’s National Hurling League final between Kilkenny and Tipperary.

The Tipperary ground is next in line for a Hawk-Eye upgrade, but GAA bosses will wait until the end of the pilot phase later this year before deciding whether to continue with the technology and extend it beyond Croke Park.

“We need Hawk-Eye,” GAA Director-General Paraic Duffy said yesterday.

“In a perfect world it would be in every venue but Thurles should be the next one. If we agree to hold on to it, as I’m sure we will after this year, then we should look at getting it into Thurles.”

He added: “If we can do that next year that would be great because of the huge number of important hurling games that are played there.

I know there are other venues as well but no venue holds more big hurling games than Thurles does, so personally I’d like to see Thurles be the next one and for that to happen sooner rather than later.

The financial cost of rolling out Hawk-Eye to the other major provincial grounds will diminish over time, Duffy added.

“When you look at it at the end of the two years, the costs are around personnel. We still bring people from Hawk-Eye in England over.

“Over time that will be phased out and it will reduce the cost when it is purely Irish personnel. That’s a gradual thing because you’ve to be absolutely sure that everybody knows how to use it.

“I don’t know what the costs would be for rolling it out. A lot of the costs here were around research. I would hope that it wouldn’t be as expensive as it has been here.”

Duffy also revealed that the GAA had offers from companies willing to replace Ulster Bank whose sponsorship of the All-Ireland Football Championship, worth a reported €1.4 million per year, ended last summer.

Instead the lucrative spot will be taken up by GAAGO, the new digital streaming service which will be launched by RTE and the GAA later this month.

“We had offers from others to come in as sponsors,” Duffy said.

We felt that, for the first year of it in particular, we really want to get it out there and we felt that this was the most effective way that we could do it. It’s something that we can afford to do.

“We had offers to fill the space but we felt that for one year, we could do it. It will only be a one-year thing.”

Clontarf GAA set a world record thanks to Jack McCaffrey and 1,499 friends

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