Pundits and diving and cheating

Hey! My three favourite things go together!

Because I was watching the FA Cup highlights the other night and saw Joey Barton act like a total arsehole (in 2 different ways in the space of a couple of seconds at one point). We saw clear video evidence of him stamping on an opponent, then within a second rolling on the floor attempting to get the same guy sent off for accidentally brushing his face.

Now This isn't a thread about what a twat Joey Barton is. (I assume there are hundreds of servers dotted around the world where the details of many tens of thousands of debates on that topic will be stored forever).

For me the really telling thing is how the incident was spoken about on MOTD. Here's a clue for what was to come: Trevor Sinclair started with "Well Joey's a mate of mine...". He then goes on about how Joey Barton "won't mind him saying" that there "wasn't much in" the stamp and (bizarrely) that "he won't mind that - there's not much in that" (in reference to the dive and playacting), that it was all part of Barton's game - he unsettles teams. Sorry. Can you **** off right now? Is someone gonna step in and say something sensible and, you know, wholeheartedly condemning? But again this is not specifically about Trevor Sinclair.

The BBC: you know that bit where he says "He's a mate of mine..." do you understand how he has just disqualified himself from being able to talk freely and intelligently about this incident and probably loads of other aspects of this or any other top-level football match? And not one person out of five of them there (to be fair the Lincoln management brothers didn't want to dwell on it but even still I would have had no problem with them saying "Yeah - that's shameful isn't it? We don't want to see that in the game") condemned what he did. It was all sort of blokey fun. Nowadays you even get active players/managers in as pundits. Guess what? They are not very objective and not very insightful for obvious reasons when assessing and commenting on their professional colleagues.

Seeing this on MOTD was just another high-water mark for me of our growing acceptance of cheating in the game. I mean seriously - not *one* person did anything but practically praise him for that aggressive, twatty, embarrassing, pathetic cheating. This is not the first time I've ranted about how acceptable cheating is now but honestly it is definitely getting to new heights of ****ness when not one person on a 5-man MOTD panel has anything negative to say about behaviour like that. Seriously. Think about that. Not one negative thing being said about it? And, actually, if anything, praise? Surely that is massively ****ed up.

 

Can't stand diving and cheating. Alli pisses me off when goes down too easily, while what Barton done the other day was a joke.

In my opinion it should be a straight red for those caught doing it.

 

To add, those dickhead pundits who say **** like "well I'm surprised he never went down" and anything along those lines should lose their jobs, the more idiots that encourage the nonsense the more it'll continue.

 

Barton's an idiot and he should've been slaughtered for that dive.
The Lincoln player was equally at fault though, as he got grabbed by Barton and didn't react, then dived and held his face when shoved.
Both of them should've been ripped to bits by the pundits.

The thing that annoys me at the moment is the disparity between media reactions.
One player dives and he's public enemy number one, then another does it and there's nothing said at all.

Feigning injury is also fine, for some reason. Games need to continue while treatment's given, in my opinion.
There's far too many teams using it as an obvious timewasting tactic.

 

I'm not in the business of defending JB but I should mention that according to the radio commentary the Lincoln player (Rhead?) elbowed him in the face several times in the first half which he brought to the attention of the ref who did nothing. JB then went on a one-man mission to get someone from Lincoln sent off in the second half, and the ref again did nothing. So he was at least consistent!

Most generally agree with the sentiment of your thread though. But note that sometimes the pundits do say something - they pick on a particular player to condemn for diving. Look at their treatment of Bale. He did dive from time to time, but far more often he failed to get free kicks and penalties because of his "reputation". Except that there were many other players around at the same time with a far greater reputation for diving that didn't get slated for it anywhere near as much. I remember once listening to a R5 commentary of some FA cup game (unfortunately can't remember which), the only game on at the time and not involving Spurs. Alan Green actually took time out from the match commentary (the match was still going on) to comment on Bale's "diving" saying he's a good player but should cut out the diving. I really hope that the refs and pundits over the top comments wasn't one of the factors in him leaving.

Edit: and just seen PNP's comment which was made at the same time I was doing mine. Certainly agree with the feigning injury comment too. I went to the Bayer match at Wembley and seemed to be watching mass injuries to them through the whole second half. 10 minutes extra time wouldn't have been enough to compensate! But apparently this is what we have to look forward to when qualifying for Europe's elite competition.

 

The part that gets me about that attitude is the comment most often used was the player was "too honest" as if the decision to not gain an illegal advantage is something which should be stamped out of players while they're in the youth team so they're ready to win at all costs as soon as they graduate to the first team. Doesn't that sound more than a little bit idiotic to suggest?

It's especially maddening in an instance where a foul is committed by the player stays on their feet and the ref rightly plays the advantage, only for the player to fluff their shot and the pundits are up in arms saying the player could have had a penalty yet ignore that the player had a scoring opportunity and all they had to do is keep their shot on target and at the very least they'd have forced a save. You know what else that describes? A penalty!

 

It's not just Europe, though.
We were crap against Liverpool and didn't deserve anything out of the game, but they shut the whole second half down.
Lots of time treating players, diving and timewasting, yet nothing was said.

 

All I seek is consistency. Say it about EVERYONE or say NOTHING.
I get sick of the cowardice/hypocrisy of the hacks + "pundits" towards their darlings
on the matter.

The ever-increasing witch-hunt on Bale (deservedly so) that peaked in 2012-13
was apparently fair game. Yet the institutional diving that was a feature of the Poool
2013-14 season : not a murmur.

 

Of course refs are supposed to add on time to cover stoppages and time-wasting. But they rarely do that enough and the commentators always say that for example a substitution is being made 'to waste a few seconds' which of course wouldn't happen if the rules were being applied.

 

It also wouldn't happen if the game didn't stop for substitutions or if players were punished for strolling off.

 

There's also the times they half-ass it, for example sometimes they'd criticise Drogba for going to ground because a gust of wind hit him at the wrong angle, but others they'd turn a blind eye to it.

 

The entire PL has a firm faith in officials' inability to add--and justly so.

 

Gamesmanship is present in most sports now. It's seen as a means of gaining an advantage, however small.

It's part of the culture in football to go down in the penalty area under the slightest physical contact, to feign injury and to waste time when there is an advantage in doing so.

Many pundits are recently retired players, who have been brought up in this culture, accepting these practices as the norm; so it's hardly surprising that they endorse it rather than condemn it, often applauding the player concerned for being "clever" or "savvy" or doing "what they had to do".

But it's not just football. The sport whose name is synonymous with fair play has batsmen who won't "walk" unless given out by the umpire, fielders who claim catches they've not taken cleanly, captain's slowing down the over rate to force a draw, ball tampering, intimidation, running on the wicket deliberately to create rough etc etc etc.

 

Absolutely (maybe not "lose their jobs" but definitely be pretty much made to not say those things). It's disgusting how accepting the whole footballing community (pockets of fans being the last bastion of a desire for fair play) has become of the endemic cheating we see now. Pundits should not, ever, be condoning or even recommending cheating. Maybe you're right - when they do that they disqualify themselves from the job. Yeah. **** it - sack 'em! Far worse than saying that you think a fellow presenter is fit.

And I don't want to just give up and see it all as inevitable, one-way traffic cheating-wards (though it kinda feels that way).

For me the simple metric that I use is "how would I feel if someone did that in a game I was playing?" and frankly I would feel that anyone who acted like a Prem League player in a game I was involved in would come over as a massive, massive prick. So I'm not asking much - just that people don't act like massive, massive pricks.

One time I was playing and a new guy to the group got tackled and screamed when he went down. Y'know - like footballers do nowadays. I was instantly assuming that we were gonna have to call an ambulance. When we gathered round him I was basically saying "No point asking if he's alright - we need to get him off the pitch and call an ambulance" because I'd never heard a grown man make a noise like that on an impact. 2 minutes later the prick was up and running around as usual. That day I realized even more how instinctively disgusting I find all the cheating and diving that we see now. Cos when some guy did it in front of me he went from seeming like a nice enough bloke to being an absolutely irredeemable ****er. That incident clouded my judgement of him for, basically, ever.

 

You know I think I might have to email the BBC.

Yes - it has come to that! Step aside people! An email complainant cometh!

 

Good luck in receiving a response that has anything to do with your actual complaint...

 

I have no doubt that my email will be very important to them, that they will greatly appreciate my feedback and that my points have been noted.

(TBH though I still hold out some miniscule hope that, of all the broadcasting bodies, the BBC might actually have some interest in maintaining some, just some, journalistic integrity. Though I guess they have to bid for the FA product like anyone else and can't bite the hand that feeds too much).

 

Most of the time, a response from the BBC is like what Google translate does with non-English documents: while there might be a thread of similarity between the two, the majority of it is spent trying to work out how the hell such a response was calculated.

Case in point, a few years ago someone wrote to the BBC saying that, during an episode of The Killing, they mistranslated a Danish word as "****" when it was something very different. The BBC's response? To issue a press release stating that, having had this brought to their attention, they would cut down on the amount of swearing in future episodes.

In other words, rather than admit they had made an error (and a remarkably minor one) instead they had to be shown to be Doing Something - even though nobody asked them to.

 

I posted this before years ago but here are the opening words of the Laws of Curling

"Curling is a game of skill and of tradition. A shot well executed is a delight to see and it is also a fine thing to observe the time-honoured traditions of curling being applied in the true spirit of the game. Curlers play to win, but never to humble their opponents. A true curler never attempts to distract opponents, nor to prevent them from playing their best, and would prefer to lose rather than to win unfairly. Curlers never knowingly break a rule of the game, nor disrespect any of its traditions. Should they become aware that this has been done inadvertently, they will be the first to divulge the breach. While the main object of the game of curling is to determine the relative skill of the players, the spirit of curling demands good sportsmanship, kindly feeling and honourable conduct. This spirit should influence both the interpretation and the application of the rules of the game and also the conduct of all participants on and off the ice."

That means it's a real sport!

 

This is what gets me when the rugger buggers bang on about how their sport is above such things: bollocks it is.

The obvious example is how rare it is to see the ball actually thrown straight during a line-up, with Australia in particular being guilty of this for years - but plenty of other countries have started using the exact same tactic during games, with South Africa, France and England all being guilty of it on multiple occasions. I've also seen some blatant examples of players literally dragging a teammate who has the ball but has been tackled a few yards further down the pitch to gain a slight advantage (France in particular have done this a few times) which again is a clear violation of the rules. And let's not forget players faking a blood injury just so they could make tactical substitutions.

Similar can be said for all the crap that goes on in tennis, be it deliberately stalling when taking a serve just to throw the opponent off their game, constantly kvetching to the umpire between points, using their appeals knowing full well they're in the wrong, or players who blatantly increase the volume of their on-court hollering when they're trying to get back into a game and.or seal a set or even match quickly by bawling their opponent off court.