Feigning injury should be video reviewed

Acting is a fine profession culminating in the Oscars with all it's glitz, glamour, joy and heartbreak but do we have to have auditions every week.

Today's footballers are a protected species where tackles are almost banned compared with the 70's when every team had a hard man to kick the opposition and stop them playing. I had a brief look for Ron 'Chopper' Harris's tackle on Eddie Gray at the instruction of his manager but couldn't find it so Eddie McCreadie on Leeds hard man Billy Bremner will suffice.

Whilst on this occasion he went for the ball, missed and took Bremner's head out, the referee simply played on. If that happened today there would be absolute uproar. As an aside it was good to hear Brian Moore on commentary again.




Micheal Platini is the man who has wanted to cut tackling out of football as far as possible, so now we have actors rolling around clutching injuries and screaming in pain when they haven't even been touched.

The video panel look at sending-offs, yellow cards or off the ball incidents. Why can they not look at cheating, diving or simulation as we are supposed to call it? Why can they not look at all the feigning injury we see every single game and punish those guilty?

If trainers wish to show they have no morals are pretend they are treating fake injuries that's up to them but cameras from every angle now can show players hardly touched or not touched at all, clutching parts of the body that haven't even been affected.

The game now is about trying to get an opponent sent off but the incompetent FA who bow to whatever the Premier League say do nothing about it, they pretend it doesn't happen. Any organisation that runs a campaign to kick racism out of football and then continues to employ an England manager who makes an inappropriate racist remark can not be trusted.

Any organisation that looks at context for their own employees but not context for Spurs fans chanting Yid are guilty of double standards and you therefore have to question the suitability of the men running it.

Cheating, if you'll forgive the pun, needs to be 'stamped out,' and simply ignoring it is not going to make it go away,

Football is not a sport anymore, it is a business, football is merely the product of that business and big business at that. The rewards for losing now are massive. Simply by finishing fourth you earn a fortune in extra gate receipts, TV revenue, appearance and prize money, you attract a better standard of player, bigger sponsorship, you can invest in infrastructure, it advances a club so much quicker than if you are missing out.

With all that money at stake surely incompetent officials deciding managers, players and clubs future should be scrutinised for any wrong doing. Players who for instance get a player sent off when they have dived or feigned injury should receive a ban themselves. Quite what you do about the affect the cheating has on the individual game I don't know but surely using video evidence as successfully used in other sports is becoming a must.

Using video evidence would be a major step but surely bringing in the video panel to look at feigning injuries is simple to do. Let's face it anyone who has ever been hurt knows what it feels like, they know how you react, what you do.

You don't hold the wrong leg, you don't hold your head, you don't roll over and over, you don't sneak looks to see if the ref is watching and you don't get up and start running around when the ref ignores you. Simulating an injury is unprofessional conduct which is a yellow card offence but you don't see referees produce them for fake injuries.

It's about time somebody put their foot down and tried to cut out the cheating culture that pervades football and quite frankly society, where standards seem to slip with each generation.

A solution is already in place and at your finger tips so use the video panel to clamp down.



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