ONCE the horror and the dust has subsided from the Ben Thatcher affair it is to be fervently hoped that football will grasp the chance to move forward on two fronts.

On the one hand the game must surely, for its own good, further embrace the kind of technology that continues to revolutionise diverse industries all over the world and, secondly, must adhere more strictly to a players' code of conduct.

The first objective, with a little open-mindedness and the willingness to invest of some of the millions of pounds that wash around the game, should easily be achieved, though the second may prove pie in the sky.

Let's take the technology issue first.

Had the fourth official at City's game against Portsmouth had the luxury of a television screen to look at then he might have spared his colleague Dermot Gallagher from a storm of criticism of his handling of the forearm smash that rendered Pedro Mendes unconscious.

Fans in hospitality suites and journalists had seen the challenge at least three times before play restarted and surely that kind of instant access to pictures should to be available to a fourth official who is already wired up to the man in the middle and ought to be empowered to stop the game.

Incident

One cannot help but feel sorry for Gallagher and, to a certain extent City boss Stuart Pearce, who on the night both got only one chance to see the sorry incident and even then probably without a clear view from not necessarily the best angle.

The City manager of course moved quickly and properly to condemn his left back having initially urged caution over a witch hunt.

Had the technology been in place for the fourth offical then he would have undoubtedly advised a red card and perhaps been able to show Pearce the footage.

Those Luddites who throw up their arms, cry foul and argue that there is no place in football for telltale cameras should lift their heads from the sand.

If a couple more `technology' breaks in a game mean a fairer outcome then let's have it - and let's have it now!

The argument that this would create a two-tiered game with one set of rules for the Premiership, where all games are covered by a plethora of cameras, and the Football League, where that is clearly not the case, is valid until one realises that top flight soccer in England is already radically detached from its lower league cousin.

Cameras

And football at the highest level shouldn't stop there. Let's use the cameras to deliberate over whether a ball has crossed the line or whether a scorer was onside or offside.

They use the `eye in the sky' to determine the validity of tries in rugby league so why not goals in football?

Of course there has to be a limit because you cannot have every tackle, throw in or corner debated at length or a game would last a whole weekend and we wouldn't need refs but surely there is a place for more technology to be introduced.

Perhaps we could follow the American football example where coaches have two challenges per match and where television replays can be overturned by the match referee watching a replay on the sidelines.

The FA would surely accept some kind of video intervention though the world governing body FIFA are not so keen.

There would be precious little argument from the men in the middle if the words of their supremo, Keith Hackett, are anything to go by.

"The man in the television van has about 26 angles of video that isn't there for the officials on the pitch," he noted post-Thatcher. Quite!

A code of conduct might be more difficult to eradicate because man is not always well disposed to fellow man especially in the middle of a sporting contest.

Soccer stars are not always particularly open to self-policing even if Sepp Blatter talks of `driving this new devil (the elbow) out of football.'

However, the players and their union must start taking responsibility for actions that threaten one another's livelihoods, their reputations and those of the club and the game as a whole.

What do you think? Have your say.

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