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TIME TO SEE RED OVER GAME'S BIGGEST BLIGHT! 07-12-06
Peter Holmes
Stealthily the submarine cruised along the Tees, semi-submerged and swerving wildly between moored ships and cruising boats. As it approached the Riverside Stadium it dived without warning, hitting the muddy bottom, staining the old river brown as it kicked up sludge. On the bridge of the good ship Middlesbrough, a bemused Captain Southgate watched as the craft quickly resurfaced and made its way a few furlongs further upstream. Then down it went again like a ton of lead dropping off the Transporter Bridge.
Captain Southgate shook his head in disbelief as the Premier class sub resurfaced almost level with his ship and there was a metallic groaning as the manway swung open on the conning tower. Out popped old Admiral Ferguson, ruddy faced and blinking against the half-light, a well-known salty sea dog in the UK waters.
Southgate shouted, "What kind of a sub is that Admiral Fergy, it appears to manoeuvre well but it looks uncontrollable - all it wants to do is Dive! Dive! Dive!"
"It's one of the World's best!" Admiral Ferguson exclaimed before putting on his rose-tinted glasses, "It's an international Portuguese model called the SS Ronaldo, it goes down quicker than the receptionist at the local sixty second brothel!"
You don't really expect this article to be about anything else but that atrocious incident of simulation (classic wankerism) that soured the game against Man Spew do you?
It's over three days since I watched that game, my mood is still very dark and, having seen the incident many times along with the later one with Boateng, I am still stewing and spewing over those disgraceful acts of blatant calculated cheating.
The fact that the perpetrator of the crime has a very large prior count of carrying out the same offence and superciliously courts controversy with his attitude, does not make it any better. During the penalty incident, compare the degree of body contact between Schwarzer and Ronaldivo to be exactly equal to the body contact between myself and Scarlett Johannsen in her latest movie. Yes! That much, nine tenths of fuck all!
Just imagine if one of Boro's forwards, as an example let's say Stewie Downing, had mazily dribbled his way into the United box and dived as theatrically as Ronaldivo leaving the springboard? Ferguson would have bounded into that technical zone spouting tartan invective and lambasted the ref, the linesmen, the fourth official, the stewards, the tea lady, and every bugger else inside the Riverside. In the after match interview he would have been eyes-on-stalks-crimson-faced-vein-bulgingly livid and, we the Western World, would not have heard the last of it as he spattered the lens of the camera with Glasgee spital berating the TV interviewer to a quivering pulp in the process.
Bollocks to this simulation garbage. It's cheating pure and simple - cheating by diving.
It's the greatest single blight on the modern game, perpetuated by yellow streaked gutless tossers who deserve an instant red card. The fact that Ferguson in particular did a combined impression of the three wise monkeys when questioned about the penalty incident says it all. This leaves one to conclude that to win at all costs is all that matters, even though diving is blatant and calculated cheating.
Fergy probably reconciles himself that this cheating lark evens itself out over the course of a season like bad refereeing decisions. He probably thinks that they are one and the same - if a referee or his linesmen fail to spot the cheat in the process of his heinous con job then it's really a bad refereeing decision after all.
My feeling is that diving and feigning injury are just as bad as taking performance enhancing drugs. The result is the same thing - cheating.
Technology in the age of everything megabyte is the answer. I know cricket is a far more protracted battle than football but it's time to adopt both cricket and rugby's extensive use of the video official to make a studied decision on contentious issues. I have been at both sports when a borderline decision has gone to video and it takes nothing away from the spectacle. Perversely it may even add to the tension and edge of the match.
Let's take the Ronaldivo belly flop with full twist and limpwristed feigning of broken toe nail a step further. I will do a modicum of ifs, buts and maybes!
Imagine if the official of the day was Styles or Poll who both tend to err on the side of oppressive over officiating. So our man in black makes an erroneous judgement on the penalty and then adjudges the innocent Skippy Schwarzer as being the last man, the last player between a cheat and the goal. He brandishes an instant red card and off goes an innocent goalkeeper, the incensed Boro players target the ref who brandishes a few more yellow dissent cards and Boro are walking a tightrope of indiscipline.
Southgate jiggles his playing cards. Off comes an outfield player and on comes Brad Jones, with one striker up front and all hands to the packed defence pump. The aggrieved Boro players understandably target Ronaldivo. Not long after, off goes Cattermole after another incident of little contact but maximum dive effect. The game descends into anarchy but Man Utd and Ferguson really don't give a flying fornication because they have three points and we have naff all plus a few players looking at three games twiddling thumbs. Then off comes the hero, the real culprit, to a back slapping cuddle from Sir Alex and a well-done round of high fives from the bench.
Ronaldo as we all know has a catalogued history of falling over at the merest hint of body contact and that trait sadly applies to his fellow countrymen, as Portuguese players and teams have a very poor reputation around Europe for diving. It's a pity he doesn't play for Torquay United who would've sacked the cheating bastard ages ago. To my knowledge they are the only club to make a public stand against diving and bloody good on them for that.
As one of the most respected gaffers ever in the game, it's time that Fergy grabbed his diving prone prodigy by the ear and point out the error of his ways. As an example of how to conduct himself in the penalty area, Fergy only needs to simply point across the training park to Rooney who is the antithesis of a cheating dive master.
There's nothing new in football though, as any of the older brigade (yes you Bob End) may recall.
Remember the one and only Frannie Lee, the rotund forward for Man City and England who gained more penalties for his club in a few seasons than the rest of the league put together? He had a reputation for going down rather too easily when in the eighteen-yard box. At the time, he copped a fair bit of stick but the truth was he was a top heavy guy and in those days the tackles were pretty fierce.
But Franny Lee cheated and got away with it too easily. That was in the Seventies and we still have the same disgraceful blight buggering the game up.
The blight knocked Australia out of the World Cup in the game against a ten man Italy - Fabio Grosso went down in the box as if hit by a low flying exocet missile when he purposely fell over a prostrate Lucas Neill.
Penalty, bulging net, robbed, plane home!
The answer?
Instant red card, a five game ban, a fine of those five weeks wages paid to charity, and, if it happens a second time in a season, a doubling of the ban and fines. Let's see how many games a season Ronaldo completes then. It will be lucky to be twenty he'll be banned that often!
The whole stadium knew that the decision was a disgrace and a very poor piece of refereeing which could have been alleviated within fifteen seconds by that waste of space fourth official. So if FIFA don't think it's a big enough blight on the so called beautiful game now, what the hell do they want the game to descend into - an impression of the world diving championships?
When will the rulers of this great game see sense and finally accept that the modern version of football needs help, or rather, the team of on-field officials needs help and bloody quickly. Opinions abound within football circles about the use of technology to help the refereeing team in its impartial officiating of a game - to quite simply help make sure that mistakes can be rectified and thus to make the game as a whole fairer.
The sad thing is that the people who posses the power in football, as in most forms of life, are wrinkly superannuated right wing old farts who most of the time don't know their buttonholes from their arseholes. So enacting effective change for the good of the game as a whole is not on the agenda of most of these conservative souls. Mention technology and you'll get a chorus of, "It will take away from the spontaneity of the game!"
Well gentlemen you have a crisis on your hands, so strong action needs to be taken now to stop this blight on our sport. Blatter and his blatherers need to stop churning out pages of vacuous platitudes and veiled threats and actually do something concrete by stamping out the cheats.
Enough Said,
ErimusRed.
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