The Moral Maze
It certainly looked like Steven Gerrard dived to win a penalty last night. In this piece, Terry Butcher points out that there was no contact (he doesn't really condemn it if you read what he says). Ian Wright says "Other teams will do it against us so why don't we do it?".
My answer to that is, because it makes us no better than them. Stepping off my high horse (unusually), what do you think. Should England's players dive and attempt to gain an unfair advantage ? Or play it fair and do the best they can ?
In essence, would you prefer England to win the World Cup by diving, or lose by staying on their feet ? I'd rather we lost, and the same goes for QPR. Is that just me ?
My answer to that is, because it makes us no better than them. Stepping off my high horse (unusually), what do you think. Should England's players dive and attempt to gain an unfair advantage ? Or play it fair and do the best they can ?
In essence, would you prefer England to win the World Cup by diving, or lose by staying on their feet ? I'd rather we lost, and the same goes for QPR. Is that just me ?
posted by Andy_Ward @ 11:00 AM
6 Comments:
At 1:49 PM,
89TJ said…
It didn't look like Gerrard dived, to me. You play footie Andy, haven't you ever had a lunging tackle cause you to lose balance even though it didn't actually make much if any contact??
I once got punched on the pitch for 'diving', after I did indeed dive forward full-length in order to avoid a knee-high tackle. Was I guilty of diving, or should it have been a free kick?
At 2:41 PM,
Andy_Ward said…
For sure. I fall over when there's no one near me, on a regular basis. Only Gerrard knows, in this case, and yes, maybe he was trying to avoid injury.
But even if that's the case, I certainly don't agree with Ian Wright. There's a lot of discussion about it on Football365.com today, it's worth a look.
Andy.
At 4:38 PM,
The Camel said…
I suspect the easiest course of action is to say that if Ian Wright says something then I believe the exact opposite.
Wright is a complete and utter cunt.
At 4:42 PM,
Anonymous said…
As an Ireland fan I'm sick of Duffer falling over every time anyone goes near him. It's cheating and it's wrong. As a Wednesday fan I still have sever misgivings about the late peno in the playoff final which ultimately won promotion (sorry Hartlepool). Cheating is cheating. As a pundit, Ian Wright is an obnoxious wanker.
At 4:45 PM,
Anonymous said…
And has no one mentioned J Cole's risible attempt to win a penalty against Belarus?
At 9:16 PM,
89TJ said…
It's a nightmare telling a dive from what's not a dive, which is one reason I am strongly opposed to suggestions to have refs send off players for diving. It's too hard a call to make to allow a referee to send a player off for a possible dive.
Besides my personal view that Gerrard lost balance trying to skip past what was, it must be remembered, a truly awful tackle, it isn't even always possible to be sure whether contact was made or not. I once had a guy catch my toe; nobody including him thought he had made any contact, but my toe was black for days.
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