I'm with Saint here, can't stand card wavers! It puts a big ****ing target on the players back if I see it on a Sunday
You could argue that basketball is intensely exciting simply because it's high scoring. You have the potential of winning and losing all through the game - one minute you're up then you're down, then up, then level .... very often until the last second, literally, you could be the winner or loser. Emotionally wrung out. Football - you can have a chat with your mates around you, go to the toilet, come back, check your phone to see how the other games are panning out and then start watching the game again - and guaranteed you didn't miss anything. A goalless draw - big yawn, never happens with basketball. That doesn't mean I like basketball more than football - I don't - but to call it boring isn't true. Sports are only boring if you have no interest in them whether they are fast or slow moving.
School football was always the fairest form of football I played. No refs to make bad calls. If you fell over or got knocked off the ball, you were a wimp and laughed at until you got up, got stronger/faster/more agile and didn't get knocked off. Dangerous tackles were self policed (usually big fights, but that could be discouraged ) and involved the player not being able to play the next time (no one plays football to get their leg broken). Solution: No referees. Slightly ott, but the principle remains; I think the refs try to over-referee games. I think physicality needs to be allowed back into the game again. Shoulder to shoulder and a player falling over shouldn't be a foul, they're just not as strong. Get up, my year 5 class wouldn't even fall over under that kind of contact. Two footed and high/late tackles, sure, keep them controlled, but football needs to be semi contact again. Retrospective banning needs to be enforced by a panel of ex players. If even I can look at challenges and laugh in disbelief at how a strapping, 14stone 25 year old flops to the ground under the slightest tough (don't give me the bollocks about he's running fast *ahem* Bale), then surely they can decide from experience.
I think the running fast argument is bollox anyway. Why should a set amount of contact on a fast player be any different to a slower player? Contact is contact and if it's a foul, its a foul irrelevant of how fast or slow a player is
that is probably true as long as everyone was big enough and ugly enough to get a dig back in. we played all years together at my school. if you were young and got o nthe ball you learned fast!. plus we played o nthe car park.... you never elarned to dive in my day. I guess nobody who played in a street like the "old days" had much change to learn how to dive either. i think myself generally speaking refs do a good job... linesmen bottle their responsibility far too much and should be forced to "flag the play" as in have to give a decision of some sort if a ref is giving a pen... like a confirmation flag even. I think refs get no respect by players and thats one step that needs to change. I think rugby has the right rules but that is my opinion only i guess.
Would still love to know what the two blokes on the goal line do on European nights; best seats in the house. Are they competition winners or something?
Lovely idea but when your player cost 80 million quid yer never going to go down the "get up wimp" approach we'd all dearly love. But it is in danger of going the same way as hockey. Emphasis on the fitness & technical ability outlaw the physicality & contact. It's why I rarely watch elite hockey and have despaired at even watching club level hockey anymore, all you hear is a bloody whistle... But....I still think a lot of this could be sorted out with a sin bin. Means it not so much life and death decisions for refs, pace & excitement of game continues. Diving Repetitive fouling Deliberate handball 10 minute sin bin.
The problem with diving is there are 2 types really. The obvious, no contact dives which are easy to see, and then the ones where there is contact but probably not enough for someone to fall over. Where do you draw the line? Do you say if there is any type of contact it doesn't get punished? What about then when someone touches someones arm and they fall over? he contact shouldn't be enough to send someone down, but you'd have to say technically there was contact. If you then include those types, how do you judge when a player is running at pace and gets a touch, how do you know if that would be enough to send them over or not? It's a tricky one, yes the blatant dives need to be punished but if you're looking back at all incidents then it comes down to different peoples perception which is where inconsistencies will come in. Those inconsistencies can be partly understood when it's from a ref that gets one look to make a decision, but not when you get a panel looking at them after the game.
