Wanderers have no axe to grind with referee Paul Durkin for letting Gary Pallister off the hook.

After all, they had similar success last season when Jimmy Phillips and Nathan Blake were reprieved after appeals.

But if referees are allowed to change decisions after consulting video evidence, they have a case for arguing that Gerry Taggart should be entitled to claim a goal and two priceless Premiership points.

And isn't there a case for the FA banning Roy Keane.

For haven't TV replays proved beyond any shadow of doubt that Taggart's header against Everton at the Reebok on September 1 was over the line and that the Manchester United captain should have been sent off for hitting a Chelsea opponent at Old Trafford on Wednesday?

The referees were apparently unsighted in each case while TV cameras captured the incidents clearly.

Of course it is neither feasible nor fair to give a goal after the event. Who knows, for instance, how Everton would have reacted to going a goal behind in the 54th minute?

But the equivalent of cricket's 'third umpire' would certainly have awarded a goal and then we would have seen for ourselves what the Mersey men were made of. He might also have fingered Keane in much the same way.

If the FA is prepared to let referees use hindsight by consulting video evidence to reconsider sendings off why can't they use technology to judicate on other difficult and equally controversial decisions on the spot? Football doesn't have the same natural breaks as cricket but for something as serious as a goal, a penalty or violent conduct on the ref's blind side, surely a short pause followed by a dropped-ball would be justified.

The FA are sceptical but Premier League referees' spokesman David Elleray and PFA deputy chairman Brendan Batson have already been quoted in this newspaper as saying the time has come for football to move into the electronic age.

Wanderers' fan Harry Barnes says he has the technology - a computer-operated back-up featuring strategically-placed sensors and a 'smart' chip in the ball. The Worsley entertainment agent and inventor, who has the support of former Manchester City star Mike Summerbee, says his system would have solved the 'goal that never was' problem in an instant.

No question of interpretation, no agonising over opinions. Just irrefutable evidence.

For the sake of fair play, however, it has to be one thing or the other. If football isn't prepared to go the whole hog in enlisting the help of technology then don't use it at all.

If, as has always been the case, the referee's decision is final then let it be so. If we can't have 'magic eyes' on the goal-line, then leave referees to stand by ALL their decisions.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.