Watching Sky sports news tonight, they mentioned 7 red cards being overturned so far this season. I wonder if the FA will start to take a look at the circumstances under which they're being brandished.

Also, on another tangent, they mentioned the FA is getting serious about cracking down on diving ahead of the World Cup. Some mention that they may consider issuing straight red cards as that is what will be issued in the World Cup(??!!). Could make for an interesting WC if players get sent off for diving. Not many matches will finish with 11 a side!

-- Anonymous, December 28, 2001

Answers

They're doing it ass about face IMO. There should be some form of 'in play' arbitration system in place, before giving refs the further problem of having to decide whether or not a player is cheating.

It's a mistake to leave decisions like that to just one person who has nothing to rely on but his own judgement, which as you point out Ciara, hasn't worked too well in trying to eliminate dangerous play.

Since we're stuck with having a fallible human being making these decisions, seems to me we should be trying to make the job as straightforwrd as possible. It's counter productive, I think, to put these guys in the position of having to justify every decision after the event purely, in most cases, on the basis of taped so called evidence.

I don't think the refereeing system will ever get any better while it's all down to one person's judgement.

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2001

Short term it will see a lot of red cards, but a clamp down on diving needs to be done.

The way players are diving - arms raised suddenly - is stupid. Even players like Shearer and Owen like to exaggerate their falls. If it means we rid the game of diving completely then so be it.

The mini-league I used to play in featured proper blokes against our team of teenagers and we used to love the physical battles to get the ball. In professional games we would all be booked for barging, or some foreigner would dive.

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2001

Why not a sin bin

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2001

We could even try unlimited substitutions, so that when we're under pressure, we could replace all of the forwards with specialist defenders, and vice versa.

Then, to take it a step further, why bother getting the ball from one end of the playing surface to the other and hopefully into the net by kicking it, which can take forever ? Let the players transport the ball by bouncing it from one end to the other by hand, throwing it to a team mate if necessary.

They could even eliminate the goals and have just small elevated baskets at each end of the playing surface in which to place the ball to score.

They wouldn't then have to waste time farting about in the middle of the playing area, as they do now, getting the ball to the opposition goal. It would simply be a mad dash from one end to the other, with all of the action concentrated where it counts, and where all of the spectators want it to be anyway.

Football would never look back played like that, can't see how it can fail, although they might have to change the name. :-{E}

Pardon the sarcasm, Josh, I was just trying to extrapolate from your suggestion, which I actually think is a good idea, to a scenario that could conceivably tranform the game we love into a version that really would bore me sh1tless.

That, I think, is the real problem with trying to make the game easier to administer. As long as the on-pitch admin is the responsibility of a human being, there'll always be controversy, and whatever we do will have to involve some interruption to the flow of the game. Coming up with a method that will keep the interruption to a minimum will tax much better intellects than ours for years to come IMO.

We're just going to have to suffer the officials as they are, warts and all, and hurling the bile at them, rather than where it should be hurled which I reckon is at the tv so called pundits and their endless exercise in futility of regurgitating controversial incidents, which can have no other effect than to build more and more resentment against referees.

But I suppose that is an inevitable result of commercialising the game more than is good for it.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2001

While I philosophically agree with you, Pit Bill - I'm afraid you simply can't put the genie back in the bottle.

There is so much at stake now that the 'best available technology' is inevitably going to be used to analyse key decisions to assist in determining 'the facts' of critical incidents.

In not availing the match officials of the same technology we are creating a bigger and bigger problem, and imo something must be done to address an ever-worsening situation.

While we instinctively feel having the 4th Official in the Stand equipped with video-replay kit to advise the Ref would slow things down too much - why not give it a limited trial to actually find out how it functions, rather than talking about it for ever?

If after a sensible trial this was deemed a failure, what then could be done? Well, I reckon increasing the number of officials could very well prove to be beneficial. The simplest way to effect this would be have 4 Linesmen - imo two are barely adequate now even for deciding throw ins in the two quarters not covered. The four linesmen should be briefed to watch for off-the-ball incidents, and cheating, and the Refs should be encouraged to rely on them far more than they tend to these days.

The Sin Bin could be considered, and indeed trialed, although I suspect it could lead to other problems. However, the red card is a very severe punishment to the team affected, and it invariably spoils the game for the paying public. This should be a consideration. Given the propensity these days for the subsequent over-turning of red cards, usually for sound reasons, and only after utilising the 'best available technology' - this does nothing to compensate the team for the loss of the player in that particular game, who is subsequently viewed as having been incorrectly sent off.

This is not a good situation, and sooner or later will create a major furore if it occurrs in a really important game.

The present head-in-the-sand approach is doing nothing to address these problems, which will only become more and more problematical if not positively addressed.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2001

The reason I see constant analysis after the event as causing more problems than it solves is that there is absolutely no way such 'analysis' will make the slightest difference to how referees handle future games.

As you point out Clarky, unless the technology that's causing all of the problems in the aftermath of matches, can be utilised during matches, I think the FA, or whoever decides these things, would be better off banning all after match regurgitation of controversial incidents.

But human nature being what it is, the internet etc would then become swamped with amateur versions of the same 'irrefutable evidence', so that idea is an obvious non-starter.

Some way has to be found to help referees to make decisions that bear as much resemblance as possible to what actually happened, and as often as possible. In the current climate, they'll continue to be on a hiding to nothing.

I don't think dodgy offsides, dodgy throwins and even dodgy freekicks need be scrutinised any more closely than now, I'd live with the hope that that sort of thing evens out over time. The hi-tech stuff need be utilised only in really controversial situations.

The current ostrich posture helps nobody.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2001