Why not kill two birds with one stone and have Hawk in Pairc?

THIS weekend’s All-ireland hurling quarter-finals are finely poised and while people will have their own fancies, nobody could pick a winner from either with a cast-iron conviction.

It’s reasonable to expect they’ll be close encounters which could be decided by the tiniest of margins – like an umpiring call.

But Fergal Horgan’s umpires for the Clarewexford tie on Saturday will be handicapped by the fact that they will have no Hawk-eye to call on at Pairc Ui Chaoimh, while James Mcgrath’s will be able to rely on the score detection technology at Semple Stadium the following day for Kilkenny-limerick.

The lengthy delays aside, Hawk-eye’s value was rarely more evident than in last Sunday’s Kilkenny-galway game, when it was called on four times.

What if the umpires are as jittery in Cork on Saturday? Well, they’ll just have to get on with it.

With more than €80m being spent on developing Pairc Ui Chaoimh anyway, surely Hawk-eye could and should have been fitted while they were at it.