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Dive Dive Dive
Written by Kj talk | 10th March 2006 | 0 Comment(s)
I read last week a quote that “suggested” players diving was starting to establish it’s self in the Premiership. I would refute that in the strongest terms and suggest not only has players diving established itself, it’s at epidemic proportions and the biggest losers in all of the cheating are the supporters! They lose out as the game has to be halted and the flow of the play lost. If a player is then sent off this will usually result in the affected manager putting ten men behind the ball and ruin as a spectacle two teams going for the win.
That of course will diminish from the pleasure of the hard pressed supporter who has to find the money for the ever increasing ticket price. We all lose together! I also read at the weekend two marvellous suggestions as how to drive out this insidious act from the game. One came from the Blackburn manager Mark Hughes who said it would be correct for supporters to boo their own players for diving and the other came from pundit Gary Lineker. He suggested players should receive a “ Pink “Card for the offence from the referee and both suggestions seem perfectly reasonable to me.
All clubs now it appears seem to have at least one main offender and some teams have more than one culprit. Hardly a game passes without focus being drawn to a player going to ground after hardly being touched by an opposing player. Added to this act of buffoonery is the now familiar antics of the player clutching his face and then rolling around on the ground like an upturned beetle. The game has then to be stopped whilst the “emergency services “are called over to attend the player.
This usually follows some imaginary treatment before he is walked off of the pitch before he returns to the play without any lasting ill effects…….pathetic and an insult to the paying public’s intelligence. The act of diving is seen by some as a direct result of the increase in foreign players coming to our shores and that probably has the ring of truth to it. However it’s upon British soil these players are operating and if we are serious in removing diving from the game then the lead should come from the authorities if the managers and clubs will not address the issue themselves.
The calling from Mark Hughes for supporters to boo their own players is in fact very encouraging as that tells me that it’s not the managers who are telling their players to dive in order to gain an advantage or get an opposition player sent off. But as we seem to be in a statistic and win at all cost world these days, how soon does the data suggest that say 8/10 games have been won after a player dived and had his fellow pro sent off leading to his own team’s victory? The manager’s would then be tempted to instruct his players to get an opposing player removed by cheating ( diving) as statistically it is proven we will go on to win the game!
As I stated it’s the paying supporter that looses out as he pays to see eleven of his own team try to beat eleven of the opposing team by possessing hopefully better player’s than the other team along with superior tactics. I know we will never return to bygone Corinthian values due to the money and the intensity of today’s game, but mutual respect from fellow pro to fellow pro and the paying public is the least we should demand.
I wonder what new decorated army Captain Peter Norton who has received the George Cross makes of it all? Here is a man who lost an arm and part of his leg after an explosion on his convoy in Iraq. Yet he still stayed conscious and was directing operation’s whilst receiving a blood transfusion and lost a total of 84 pints of blood. Then we have a Premier forward built like the boxer Sonny Liston pirouetting in mid air and falling in mock agony to the ground as he had just received thirty rounds from an M-16 rifle.
Perhaps that should be the appropriate punishment; my guess is it would keep the player’s off of the ground for longer!
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