Australia offered up as goalline guinea pigs

SYDNEY (Reuters) -- Australia would be willing guinea pigs for goalline technology, the country's soccer federation chief said on Thursday.

Football Federation Australia boss Ben Buckley offered the A-League as an official testing ground for the technology should the global governing body FIFA take that route.

Results of initial tests would be examined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), next month, Sydney's Daily Telegraph said.

"I think it's something we should be open-minded about, and Australia would be a good place to test it," Buckley told the newspaper.

"Clearly we would need to discuss the logistics of it, but we would like to make the offer if that's the path FIFA decide to go down.

"We believe the infrastructure of the league is of a high enough quality to give it a meaningful trial. As a competition we took the initiative on using video technology to penalise simulation retrospectively, and pleasingly you now see very, very little of that in our game.

"Everyone wants to see the correct decisions made by the officials, and this seems to be a way of supporting them in that."

Opponents of goalline technology, including FIFA president Sepp Blatter, say its use would break up the rhythm of a match.

It is an emotive topic, however, and the clamour for reform erupted again last year when England were denied a goal against Germany at the World Cup when Frank Lampard's shot clearly crossed the line.

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