English soccer club AFC Bournemouth is debating whether to pursue legal action over a faulty goal line call from Hawk-Eye, according to the BBC. The errant call resulted in the team being relegated from the Premier League.
Fellow Premier League clubs Ashton Villa and Sheffield United played a match on June 17 that ended in a scoreless draw. However, Sheffield United should have been credited a goal after Aston Villa’s goalkeeper Orjan Nyland mistakenly carried the ball over his own goal line. Nyland’s mishap was not detected by Hawk-Eye’s cameras.
Villa ended the season with one more point than Bournemouth, but with a worse goal difference. Without the single point it gained from the tie, Villa would have been relegated from the EPL instead of Bournemouth.
“The seven cameras located in the stands around the goal area were significantly occluded by the goalkeeper, defender, and goalpost. This level of occlusion has never been seen before in over 9,000 matches that the Hawk-Eye Goal Line Technology system has been in operation,” Hawk-Eye said in a statement released after the June 17 incident.
