by bigmick » Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:35 pm
I've long advocated retrospective video evidence. It'd be very easy to do in the Prem, a three man panel and they revue all contensious issues from all the matches each week. If you dive and are found out, three match ban. If you dive and are awarded a penalty, ten match ban. It would cut it right down.
The hardest thing would be deciding what is a dive and what isn't. Pundits and people often talk about whether or not there was contact, and I think it's a bit of a Red Herring. If GYBS comes round my house and tw@ts me over the head with a baseball bat before throwing the bat down and writhing around on the floor, there was contact but it would be hard for him to argue that I'd used foul play towards him. There was "contact" for the penalty which Man Utd were awarded against Arsenal, but it wasn't a foul IMHO. Rooney knocked the ball past Almunia (and into the third row of the stands as it turned out) before dragging his leg into the keeper as he was throwing himself at the ground. That's a dive but impossible to prove, aided and abetted by extremely poor refereeing. For me, there has to be denial of a goalscoring opportunity and given the match ball had long since disappeared into some fans LIDL bag, there wasn't any of that.
Another one which pundits dredge up from the opposite side of the coin is whether or not the defender "got something on it" when they make a challenge. I think Bertie Vogts "got something on it" when he tackled Keegan in the 1977 European Cup Final, but he went through Keegan to get it which you aren't allowed to do.
You need a video panel, and you need good refs. Retrospective punishments for diving would solve much though. Also, when a player hits the deck and is writhing, he should be stretchered off and examined by a neutral doctor in the confines of the dressing room. He should not be allowed back onto the pitch until the examination is complete, all in the interests of safety of course. Similarly, if a team which is in the lead wishes to make a substitution when there are less than 15 minutes left of the match, an additional five minutes should automatically be added onto the clock. This will do two things. Firstly it will give the departing player plenty of time to shake hands with the ref, clap his fans, ruffle the opposition centre forwards hair and amble off. Secondly and entirely as a bi-product, it will stop the ridiculous spectacle of teams making a sub with 20 seconds left. People paying good money to watch deserve better.
Last edited by
bigmick on Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".