Sick of Poor Sporting Behavior in Footy ??

[Regiment]

Have you had just about as much as you can take when it comes to diving, play acting, off the ball nonsense, the waving of imaginary cards to get opponents booked, and other poor sporting behavior on a football pitch ??

Well, I have, and I m almost as fed up with the amount of times people (pundits, managers, players, fans etc etc) say “something needs to be done about it”.

So, I m throwing an idea out there, and would appreciate any feedback you can spare the time to pass my way. I thank you in advance.

Some time ago, I watched a midweek European match on TV, I believe it was Arsenal v Celtic, where Eduardo blatantly threw himself down and won a penalty. TV replays showed there was no contact whatsoever, but Arsenal went on to win the game, as so often happens when this sort of cheating is successfully employed. If I remember correctly, I believe Eduardo was "punished" afterwards, but of course, the penalty decision and result could not be changed. I'm not suggesting the result should've been overturned or anything like that, but there was not enough done to act as a deterrent to others.

The next day on talk sport radio, everyone was phoning in and going nuts about it, and on a whim, I decided to register a website, and had this grand idea of, not so much starting a campaign, but trying to promote the fact that this needs to be clamped down on in our beloved sport.

This happens at all levels of football, and we ve been on the wrong end of such antics many times at TUFC. All the nonsense before, during and after the Crawley FA Cup tie spring to mind.

So, the website I started all that time ago, and never really got going, is :-

http://www.footballagainstdiving.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I need some help to develop the website, move it forward, and would even like to put something forward to the club. If I/we could get the club to back the idea, and promote it in some way, and maybe even take a stance that “if any of our players are proven to have done this stuff, we won t stand for it”, it might just be the start of something, and would even give some positive press to the club for trying to address this problem in football. I honestly believe TUFC are incredibly fair in these respects and our players are vary rarely involved in such incidents, but the same cannot be said of others of course.

The FA are always on about “Fair Play”, “Respect” etc, and something like this would make the ref s job easier, because is it totally the ref s fault when he has been “conned” ??

Well, I won t go on any more now, those are some of my thoughts, would really appreciate any feedback from you guys.

Cheers.

Brady.

[westbaygull]

oh brady, i tried to post a sensible reply before about how it's down to the officials, how i wouldn't care if a billy dive won us a crucial game, etc, but my sensible post was lost in some error message. In it's place, is the following...are you chris roberts, eek?
Sorry for lack of appropriate punctuation ans smilies but first time mobile posting. Ooh, get me..

[Regiment]

thanks for trying west, appreciate the effort despite it not working out quite how you'd hoped !!

and no, i'm not CR !! :no: ha ha.

i know it's a tough subject to tackle, as there are winners as well as losers for each decision, but i hate being on the wrong end of one.

judging by the responses here, i guess i'm in the minority !! i thought it was worth a try, but now i'll crawl back under my rock !!

[cambgull]

I love the idea Brady but unfortunately, I just can't see it doing anything. The FA are never going to listen to a website made by some Torquay fan, much like they'll never listen to some Man Utd fan either. Frankly, they don't listen to anyone else unless they're either working with them or being given money by them.

The FA will never be able to get rid of diving from the game because it's the most shoddy organisation in the world and nobody really cares what they say. The only way it could ever really work is if the FA just laid out a new bunch of rules which were as clear as day and the punishments were brutal. We'd have a bit of whinging from Wenger & Co but it'll soon stop.

[Regiment]

maybe i should fire this idea over to Mr Mourinho today ??