Diving.

Mexican Hornet

Mexican Hornet

Well-Known Member
Dec 18, 2011
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After watchng A. Young and his theatricks today it made me think if our players dive or not. Was Young like this during his time with us? I can't remember to be fair.

Do you think we have honest players? Who do you think is the worst for diving at our club?

Whatever it is called, diving, simulation, conning the ref etc...it should not be part of our or anyone's game. Personally I think the leagues below the Prem are a bit more honest and don't get me started on some of the other European league games that I watch. However, whether it is more prominent in other leagues or not it needs to be stamped out. Eventually the sport will lose respect with cheats about. Unfortunately, let's face it football is already becoming tainted.

Even though I am not a big fan of Rugby the players all have my respect for the way they approach games, it is a sport with much more integrity.

Thanks for your thoughts...
 
IMHO young Mr Young dived against the Steptoes and made the most of the contact against the defenders foot this afternoon, at full speed it looked like a penalty but in slo-mo he made the most of it! The trouble is it is rife throughout the game it should be punished but with only one view for the ref he has to make an instant decision and generally gets it wrong IMHO! If memory serves Will Buckley used to go over as if there were the preverbial sniper on the roof, I hate the way players con the ref whether it simulation or giving cuddles, sorry jersey pulling it has to be stopped. Rugby has got it right, where they respect the match officials where our beloved game has too many con artists and cheats, who have no respect for authority!
 
Players who willfully go down like they've been shot during a match should be banned for a match, then shot with a tazer, and then banned for two more matches.

Any manager found to have encouraged a player to go down and take the punishment should be banned for life.
 
I feel the same, it needs to be addressed with severe measures before it becomes alarmingly commonplace in our beloved, slightly polluted game.
 
I didn't feel that he (Young) dived when he was with us. He's always been a skinny/nippy fella but I dont ever recall him going down without contact to get a penalty. However in Man Utd's last two home games he has made, and unfortunately won, 2 penalty's by diving. I imagine by the start of next season the refs will be clued up about him and probably wont give him any decisions, even if he's is actually fouled, thats how these things work you see, from one extreme to another.

As for us this season. Garner is either overly physical and looks like he's trying to hurt someone, or he's falling all over the place. Apart from him though I cant think of anyone else who dives or goes down easily. Compared to the other clubs in this league we are quite a robust but fair team. We're honest but like to get stuck in, without trying to con the ref. What we do need to cut out though is all the high feet. Our players leaving their feet in the air which is dangerous due to the studs potentially catching someone (Nos is quite bad for that). A lot of the sides we have come up against this season though, their players are either very weak physically or are just plain cheats. Too many times this season Ive seen opposition players go down with minimal or no contact from our players. Something that bugs me a lot though is that 50% of the time Iwelumo goes to win a header the ref will give a foul against him. He doesn't barge players out of the way, he usually keeps his arms down and he always goes to win the ball, yet refs dont seem to like the fact that he's big???? Exactly the same when he had Hendo, refs just didn't/dont like him.


Basically, football in England is becoming a game for fairy's and panzy's where your not allowed to tackle, get stuck in or show any form of physicality. Either because of some p*** diving or because of some whistle happy ref who has never played the game. 10 years ago the way games were officiated was spot on, but a lot has changed since then.
 
Unfortunately the financial stakes in football are rather different to rugby. None of us likes to see play acting of any description, but this is not the only issue - why do managers, for example, substitute players during the last 2 minutes of a match which they are winning 1-0 in such a fashion that it takes as long as possible ? Presumably to break up the game rhythm. You could go on and on, but as long as the difference between winning and losing can involve millions of pounds then such behaviour will continue in one form or another. The only way is to tackle the financial side of football by really enforcing strict regulations on the definition of club status, as they do in Germany for example. If Ashley Young has turned into a diver then we need to be asking the question of how much the league title is worth to Man. UTD and does this sum still bear any relation to reality or sport ?
 
There is a little bit of overlap between the point you are making and the point I'm making colognehornet. You can't blame the player for doing something within his power to increase his side's chances of winning, particularly when there is minimal risk. One way or another, you have to make it unattractive to the player and to his club to deceive a referee, even if the initial deception is successful.
 
North North Watford said:
One way or another, you have to make it unattractive to the player and to his club to deceive a referee, even if the initial deception is successful.
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I guess what you're really saying is that the authorities should clamp down hard on a player retrospectively if he has been shown to cheat. The problem with that approach is that there is a danger that the referee's authority will be damaged.

I say to hell with that - if the referee is wrong or simply was conned, then penalise the player afterwards anyway - ban the player for a few matches but make it clear that the referee is not at fault.

After all, a cricket umpire's authority is not undermined by the third umpire reversing an on-field decision.
 
As has been said, Garner is the only player we have at the moment who falls over a lot..but i don't think he dives, he just falls over a lot, for no particular reason often. I do think Priskin used to dive a fair amount, often winning free kicks in the most embarrassing of ways...that is..when he wasn't busy being caught offside.

We do have our cheaters though, if you count all the shirt tugging, and pulling, and arms round the neck and shoulders we see week in week out...we're not necessarily the worst offenders, but we have offenders...Tiny springs to mind as one who is probably one of the worst in a yellow shirt atm...
 
Hornette_TID said:
As has been said, Garner is the only player we have at the moment who falls over a lot..but i don't think he dives, he just falls over a lot, for no particular reason often. I do think Priskin used to dive a fair amount, often winning free kicks in the most embarrassing of ways...that is..when he wasn't busy being caught offside.

We do have our cheaters though, if you count all the shirt tugging, and pulling, and arms round the neck and shoulders we see week in week out...we're not necessarily the worst offenders, but we have offenders...Tiny springs to mind as one who is probably one of the worst in a yellow shirt atm...
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Within reason there is nothing wrong with shirt tugging/pulling, it's part and parcel of the game. Obviously if you do it to the extent that the player is not able to run/move then yeah thats a foul, but otherwise it's something that a normal thing to happen in a football match IMO.

This is going to sound really biased, but IMO it's the opposition who make us look overly physical. They are the ones always looking for the free-kicks, we dont look for free-kick, we just get on with the game. We just seem to get penalised for being competitive.
 
If memory serves me correctly (which it usually doesn't!) a couple of seasons ago we only got 1 or 2 penalties and I think that was down to us being honest and refusing to go down just because there was the slightest of contact.

Having said that though, I always remember Priskin as one who would topple over quite easily. Also Helguson has also gone down like he has been shot if a defender as much as looked at him. Like it has been said by a few here already, Garner seems to fall over quite a bit. But I think that he is actually falling over rather than diving. The only other player that I can remember falling over qutie a bit was Gifton Noel-Williams. But not sure if he was trying to pull a fast one or just plain clumsy!
 
Simpology81 said:
If memory serves me correctly (which it usually doesn't!) a couple of seasons ago we only got 1 or 2 penalties and I think that was down to us being honest and refusing to go down just because there was the slightest of contact.

Having said that though, I always remember Priskin as one who would topple over quite easily. Also Helguson has also gone down like he has been shot if a defender as much as looked at him. Like it has been said by a few here already, Garner seems to fall over quite a bit. But I think that he is actually falling over rather than diving. The only other player that I can remember falling over qutie a bit was Gifton Noel-Williams. But not sure if he was trying to pull a fast one or just plain clumsy!
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On average we get about 2 pens a season Id say. Last season we got 3 or 4??? But to us that was a lot of penalty's to have as we are used to getting just the 2 per season. I remember 2 seasons ago Cardiff got about 14 pens in one season!
 
Was thinking about this myself earlier and I can't remember being embarrassed by Ashley Young going to ground for us which I'm sure I would have been even if it won something like a penalty. I just hate seeing that sort of thing but it's just getting worse and worse as the only action taken, rarely at that, is a yellow card. Hardly much of a deterant. You can't help but think that, whilst it may not be encouraged as such, players are hardly going to be told not to do it by their managers. What's good for the goose and all that. Has Rio tweeted again since his outburst against these divers? Comically good timing that the very next game Young dives and gets a player sent off. Last I heard Rio took the classic Wenger approach and said he didn't see it.
 
Something that to this day still baffles me, something that Ive never been able to get my head around, is when a ref actually see's and acknowledges a player has dived in the box, so gives a free-kick to the other side (fair enough)............BUT WHY DOESN'T HE BOOK THE PLAYER WHO HAS JUST CHUFFING DIVED?????? This seems to happen a lot in the Champions League games that I watch on the tele.
 
Maybe it should be the clubs who are made to pay for cheating spectators as well as other teams. It is little short of bringing the game into disrepute and they do get punished for crowd misbehaviour. With a review system after matches clubs could be fined a fixed amount per spectator, so the largest teams would get the largest fines. It would not have to be generally published what the club had been fined for, only the amount, and then up to the club to decide what they wished to do with the individual concerned. If the bank balance was hit with large amounts regularly, then the managers would be under pressure from owners to make sure that the practice stops. £10 at PL, £5 at Championship etc. would get even the most generous of owners thinking twice.
 
It almost looks as though some players, Young included, have been working on their technique...making sure an ankle or a trailing foot makes contact with a defender when it's very clear the contact could easily be avoided. It's clearly easier to see this on a slow motion replay than for a ref to be absolutely certain that's what happened. Some kind of retrospective punishment based on video evidence might reduce the number of offences though it wouldn't change the results of the games affected by it.
 
vic-rijrode said:
I guess what you're really saying is that the authorities should clamp down hard on a player retrospectively if he has been shown to cheat. The problem with that approach is that there is a danger that the referee's authority will be damaged.

I say to hell with that - if the referee is wrong or simply was conned, then penalise the player afterwards anyway - ban the player for a few matches but make it clear that the referee is not at fault.

After all, a cricket umpire's authority is not undermined by the third umpire reversing an on-field decision.
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Well said.

In my opinion referee's authority is already undermined in two ways.

Firstly, and most relevant to this discussion, players making them look like clowns by deliberately cheating and tricking them into the wrong decision.

Secondly, and in my opinion more importantly, players being able to get away with talking down to the referee. If a rugby union player aggressively runs towards a referee at maximum pace, yelling something along the lines of "what the **** was that for? that was ****ing obvious!", the referee is entitled to send him off. He won't always, but players are relatively well behaved towards referees simply because refs are willing and able to do it if necessary.
 
North North Watford said:
Secondly, and in my opinion more importantly, players being able to get away with talking down to the referee. If a rugby union player aggressively runs towards a referee at maximum pace, yelling something along the lines of "what the **** was that for? that was ****ing obvious!", the referee is entitled to send him off. He won't always, but players are relatively well behaved towards referees simply because refs are willing and able to do it if necessary.
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Ah yes but the players of our "beautiful game" hide behind the "passion", "heat of the moment" and "getting caught up in the game" to excuse themselves of being assholes.

Apologies for the slightly excesive quote use!
 
Si said:
Ah yes but the players of our "beautiful game" hide behind the "passion", "heat of the moment" and "getting caught up in the game" to excuse themselves of being assholes.

Apologies for the slightly excesive quote use!
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quite right, this...(apology not necessary ;) )
 
hornethologist a.k.a. theo said:
It almost looks as though some players, Young included, have been working on their technique...making sure an ankle or a trailing foot makes contact with a defender when it's very clear the contact could easily be avoided. It's clearly easier to see this on a slow motion replay than for a ref to be absolutely certain that's what happened. Some kind of retrospective punishment based on video evidence might reduce the number of offences though it wouldn't change the results of the games affected by it.
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Spot on- I've always thought this.

And I always thought AY went down a bit too easily when he was with us. I used to excuse it because he was only a mere scrap of a thing.

Would hate him to really get stuck with a reputation because it would take the edge off the pride of watching him play for England.
 
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