KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) have admitted that they are ready to consider the proposal to implement the use of Video Referral for every Malaysia Hockey League (MHL) match beginning next season.
However the matter needs to be discussed further with Astro who are the league’s official broadcaster.
"Now we will try to hold discussions with Astro to telecast all the matches live.
"Because of this, we will bring forward discussions so that we can present to Astro the league programme for next year in order to obtain their agreement.
"However if Astro are not able to do so, then we may move to our second option which is to use our own video recording equipment which will be limited in terms of dimensions.
"Now itself the International Hockey Federation (FIH) are already telecasting many matches live online via Youtube by using four dimensional video recorders,” said MHL’s competitions director, Brian Fernandez.
Yesterday (Tuesday), NSTP Sport had reported that national women’s hockey team coach, K. Dharmaraj had urged MHC to move towards implementing the use of their very own video recorders as a cost effective means to realise the use of Video Referral.
This issue was raised following MHL’s failure in implementing new technology for Premier League matches this year which has seen debatable decisions made by umpires especially in the 23 meter area.
In fact, when compared to Europe’s top hockey leagues, most of the countries there have already implemented the use of Video Referral in order for players to be up to speed with the modern game.
However, the estimated cost of up to RM100,000 in bringing live telecasts of matches is understood to be among the reasons why MHL have done so only for the TNB Cup semi-final and final matches this season.