Is there a general popular feeling that cheating in sports is a good thing?

This would explain lots of things I have wondered about for a long time? It seems like, if they wanted to, most major sports could drastically reduce the amount of diving, flopping, dangerous play etc at their top level, by simply saying that if there is video evidence that it occurred, the player would be suspended for the next game. And yet none do. The refs punish these things lightly in the game, and if they are not caught, nothing happens at all. What's weird though is that these things aren't judgement calls in many cases! Like, loads of the time it's really clear.

So, is there a sense in which sports bodies and/or fans actually like these things? I remember Ade being all "...on reflection, BEAST" after some off-the-ball thing is the superbowl, is this a commonly held view?

I guess zidane.mpg is relevant here.

This seems really faux-naive but it is isn't intended as such!

some of these forms of "cheating" have essentially become part of the game

well sports is about winning and whining. if your team is winning you don't really care how, including cheating, if your team is losing you can always blame it on the opponent's cheating.

this only goes for team sports though, i have a feeling in individual sports the vox populi (or whatever) is getting really tired of cheating (=doping)

cheating that increases the entertainment (panto villain tackling, simulation etc) can be great

cheating that doesn't improve the spectacle (drugs, ref bribing etc) total dud.

I don't think there is sentiment like this at all. In baseball, steroid users are seen as total pariahs-see: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez.

Is says here http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.footballfanscensus.com%2FFCBgoallinetech.pdf&ei=4Wr4SbqNDprLjAe0tMG4DA&usg=AFQjCNEWQ0j_A2GBfz7UGvOMrdlDZ2H-Ew&sig2=ARFr6ns4IF-8F-PcKScLDw that 83% of (uk, football) fans would support punishments for diving on video? And 93% for dangerous play? No idea re: how scientific their methods were. So I guess that answers my question, or rephrases it?

83% of (uk, football) fans would support punishments for diving on video? And 93% for dangerous play?

ask united fans if they'd want cristiano ronaldo or rooney booked for every dive.

fans in general support anything they imagine would make it easier for their own team, but then in specific situations it's unfair any time that action is taken against one of your own players under any new initiative.

Yeah, steroids are a totally different thing. I don't know, I was reading about Ty Cobb sharpening his studs before sliding into bases and thinking that I am a) not surprised that nothing was done about this (entertainment, etc) and b) kind of confused as to why exactly i am not surprised?

Tangentially related, I was fascinated learning that water polo players pretty much beat the shit out of each other under the surface of the water - clawing, pinching, grabbing. Many of them grow out nails to inflict more damage on the opponents. All of which is technically cheating, but ends up as one of those things that happens all the time but rarely gets called out as such.

I guess zidane.mpg is relevant here.

Um I don't think so - it could only be very tenuously described as cheating in terms of the game in question and if there was a consensus worldwide view it was that it wasn't so much 'good' or 'bad' as 'funny'

The knock-on effect of the sort of thing proposed in the original post is to undermine the authority of referees/umpires etc. That's a pretty big change in any sport.

DJ mencap I suggested it because it was a case where the referee had clearly missed something, then used video evidence to address his decision in a weird 'oh wait this is the world cup final the rules are different' logic?

don't buy that video evidence after the fact would undermine the ref's authority. it's simply a case of making it more certain that a player will be punished for transgressions, which is in the interests of the game. when you strengthen the enforcement of the rules, the ref has more authority.

refs lose more authority when they are getting decisions wrong that 99.8% of people watching will have seen three times in slow motion within a minute.

Yeah, I was thinking of stuff like the waterpolo nails stuff! I remember hearing two commentators arguing in a basketball game, one saying "now in that situation you can get as dirty as you like, because the refs are going to call a jump ball no matter what", and the other one saying "now hang on, basketball isn't (american) football", so there clearly ARE people who think obscured dirtiness is very much a positive feature of the game?

well, any time you're playing sneaky foreigners like chelsea were last night, certainly the 'home' commentary team are all on for just that type of cheating.

they don't like it up em, etc.

Ah sorry (xp re Zidane) - WRT football the case against video evidence has mainly concerned it being used while the game is being played, I guess - it's not really feasible because it's supposed to be relatively 'flowing' as sports go

Yeah you tend to find that the only time commentators actually come out and endorse cheating are in international tournaments or European games

(as in Champions League/UEFA Cup)

Sports professionals are constantly looking to get an edge in their chosen field and part of that will always involve testing the limits of the rules. I think fans generally accept this as inevitable and eventually all sports reach an equilibrium about what level of "cheating" is acceptable and what is really beyond the pale. Generally if a particular strategy is deemed unacceptable then the laws of the game will change. All sports rules are in a process of transistion, whether minor or major.

It varies wildly from game to game of course. I'm certainly no expert, but I find Rugby Union particularly fascinating in this regard, as minor cheating seems to be endemic and generally accepted, probably because the interpretation of the laws is comparatively subjective on the part of the referee when compared to many other sports. Activities such as throwing crooked lineouts, lifting in the lineout, holding on to the ball on the ground, raking, moving into an offside position, collapsing the scrum, and even surreptiously punching an opponent, all occur on a very frequent basis and are generally accepted if they can be done without attracting the referee's attention.

Whether fans enjoy it, I don't know, but certainly it contributes to the overall "narrative" of Sport and gives everyone something to talk about.

OTM - injustices and travesties, perceived or otherwise, are a part of the game.

The other thing is, imagine the ref in a football match having to consult a video every time someone goes down in a challenge. It'd slow the game down massively and be a colossal pain the arse.

Also I'm not totally sure if drug-taking is a complete turn-off to the casual fan. I'm sure if you play the sport yourself or are a total purist enthusiast, you might object to say steroid taking. But as an occasional Tour de France viewer, it never made a blind bit of difference to me that, for example, Marco Pantani was caught for doping - his mountain climbs are still etched in my mind as some of the greatest moments in sport ever. I'm pretty sure there is a sizeable minority of people, who would be happy for doping to be made legal in sports if it meant for a more entertaining spectacle.

well if he did it for every challenge, sure it would.

Something really weird to me is that the use of video evidence ingame is pretty much gaining ground across all sports, whereas postgame stuff is pretty much stuck on the ground, when it seems much less controversial!

If everyone was allowed to take any performance enhancing drug, then i'd be ok with it as not affecting the 'fairness' of the spectacle.

Until then, it certainly tarnishes the record anyone caught- Michelle Smith in particular, from an Irish point of view, became something very like a hate figure nationally.

Postgame stuff totally undermines the authority of the ref as well as the final result though, that's the whole thing. Red cards in football can be rescinded but otherwise it's hugely problematic - do you remove a goal from one team if a free kick or penalty decision is seen to have been unjust, for example? Both teams need to know where they stand once the final whistle goes or it just isn't a sport.

There is also the issue with sport that if people have paid a lot of money, for example, to see Man Utd, they probably also expect to be able to see Cristiano Ronaldo; they don't want the spectacle ruined because he is retrospectively suspended every other game. Nor do, I imagine, his sponsors or the Premier League itself. Consequently there is grey area in the rules in which he can operate with comparative impunity.

Was the Tevez case an FA or legal ruling? If a team can be fined for dodgy dealing leading possibly to an 'unfair' result, is there not a kind of precedent, here?

let justice be done, though the premier league coffers fall

xxxxpost

I suspect all the major riders in the Tour have always been on drugs. They were guzzling amphetamines quite openly in thirties, for example, until people started dying of heartaches during the race.

er heartaches...."heart attacks"

But Christiano Ronaldo is really good at football! He doesn't punch people in the face, or pick up the ball and run with it, because he knows there are consequences for doing this? And as a result he does not not get suspended for these things which he does not do? It's not like diving is his main contribution to the team.

it would take three months max for little cristiano to 'adjust' to the rules. especially once his manager realised the FA were serious about implementation.

people pay to see a spectacle, but i wouldn't assume the spectacle would be any less without diving, gouging, dangerous tackles etc

GP OTM- it's steven taylor that would really need to worry about permabans with proper retrospective video evidence reviewed consistently.

people generally think diving is ok for their team because it was invented by pioneering cheats from other teams and our lads have to do it to keep up, much as it pains them. There is a general perception that it's impossible to stamp out, but this is maybe a defeatist response fostered by the FA's wilfully bureaucratic rules on stuff like this

I always assumed the video evidence thing would entail a fifth official sitting in a booth watching a video closely and advising the ref through an earpiece, but that would remove the traditional situation where everyone present can clearly see what advice the ref has been given by his officials and would maybe lead to weirdness if you got another Pedro Mendes type travesty and it still wasn't given

also might result in weird situations like a ref having to give a pen on the spot for a perceived professional foul but then actually letting the guy stay on the pitch despite the penalty because video man had pointed out that he never made any contact

Generally if a wall starts to encroach on a free kick in small tip-toeing steps I start ripping chairs up and trying to overthrow the government, but people are often frustratingly reticent to join me

if they had like a retroactive footballing war crimes tribunal that included all past offenses, Stephen Taylor would singlehandedly necessitate reintroduction of the death penalty

xxxpost

You are right it wouldn't take long at all for players to adjust. But at the moment, there is obviously no real pressure for the rules to change in that regard and most people with a stake in the sport are content with the current equilibrium. Diving is accepted as basically an aspect of the game (in fact I thought in Argentina there is actually a recognised named position for a player who seeks to deliberately win penalties). You'd need a worldwide consensus for things to change and obviously attitudes to diving vary from country to country.

But most importantly, as has already been pointed out, no one wants games, leagues, cups etc decided by retrospective application of the rules. Look at Formula 1: why bother tuning in if the results of every race are reduced to a court case that is barely comprehensible to the average fan?

"would maybe lead to weirdness if you got another Pedro Mendes type travesty and it still wasn't given

also might result in weird situations like a ref having to give a pen on the spot for a perceived professional foul but then actually letting the guy stay on the pitch despite the penalty because video man had pointed out that he never made any contact
"

can't see a video ref letting pedro mendes decision (either thatcher elbow yellow or three yard goal) go unchanged- that's the whole point.

If a video ref tells a ref that there was no contact, then the penalty doesn't go ahead. how is this an issue?

to be clear- retroactive decision of game results isn't on the table.

decisions going to video during the game would be limited to penalty calls, red card calls and disputed goals (possibly including offside decisions leading to a goal), not hugely common occurrences during games.

Dangerous, career threatening play needs to be stamped out though, for sure, and is really a separate issue, compared to diving and other mundane forms of cheating.

xpost

Sorry I was trying to talk about sports in general, I didn't know we were homing in on Football specifically.

Well, I'm just thinking in terms of really borderline difficult to call ones; if the ball isn't actually out of play, is the ref going to have time to wait for videoman to cycle through different angles until he gets to the really obscure one that shows the player got a nick on the ball? Like DC says, if the ref is waiting for videoman clearance on every decision then the game would be a farce, but there are gonna be times when he makes an apparently obvious judgement call on the spot that turns out to be wrong when reviewed

that was an xpost to your first post, ignore the second half I guess

I hadn't thought of the fact that if, say, the EPL did unilaterally stamp out diving, it would be terrible for English national football! That's a really good point e.a.w.

Personally, as regards Football, yes, I agree; I don't understand why there is such reticence towards the use of a video referee, given that it seems to work fine in rugby and other sports.

(Although obviously it doesn't apply to sports like the NBA where there is no real meaningful other stage, or at least that a rules change wouldn't filter to?)

can't see a video ref letting pedro mendes decision (either thatcher elbow yellow or three yard goal) go unchanged- that's the whole point.

I dunno, before it happened I couldn't have seen any sentient organism not giving the Pedro Mendes goal, but it was against MAN UNITED

the fact that anyone can see it working as well as it does in rugby is a huge argument for.

EAW- i guess football is the sport i watch the most, i'm not too sure what other forms of 'cheating' there are in other sports aside from drugs/illegal performance enhancement in individual sports and sneaky violence in team sports.

agree: re Ben Thatcher though, just send him off in the next break in play after yr handy tip-off

ts pedro mendes goal where neither ref nor linesman could see it cross the line, vs ball totally encased in johnathan woodgate's body goal at the weekend could be clearly seen by officials.

i'm not too sure what other forms of 'cheating' there are in other sports

I hear in America they call the gridiron "football" even though they exclusively use their hands!!! They also wear armour.

played in a county league match once where a ref sent a guy off just for walking on the pitch before kick off, having reffed him several times before. good times, good call.

see, a video ref would clearly see a player wearing armour and call foul.

I'm kind of hazy on the Pedro Mendes details tbh, I think I may of been a "student" at the time

In baseball, steroid users are seen as total pariahs-see: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez.

"Total pariahs" to the vicious little sanctimonious turds known as sports columnists.

The MSM cherry-picking of what constitutes cheating is absurd.

i don't give a fuck- anyone that thinks that mendes call added to the 'spectacle' gets SB'd

more of a Carroll own goal really

it's still kind of hard to see how two officials would conspire to miss that between them

xpost to GP

It does happen though that different leagues operate under different rules nationally, but then have to re-adjust to a different system internationally.

For example (and again I might have got the wrong end of the stick, as I am by no means a massive rugby union fan), I was under the impression that southern hemisphere Super 12's style rugby union has slightly different rules to northern hemisphere rugby union, and controversies have raged about which ruleset should filter up to the international level. After the last World Cup, I believe the southern hemisphere rules changes have held sway.

So the example you give of the PL taking a stand on diving is conceivable, but not very likely.

oh wait, I thought you were saying that it wasn't the ref or linesman's fault because there was no way they could of seen it

I think Peter Enckelman's phantom own goal from a Mellberg throw in definitely added to the spectacle, difficult as it is for me to say that

"Total pariahs" to the vicious little sanctimonious turds known as sports columnists.

^and to any fans that witnessed the sad spectacle of Bonds' chase of the home run record.

Oh god, poor Spurs.

Is there cheating in baseball besides steroids? What forms does it take? I know nothing about baseball.

All the officials were somewhere around the centre circle ie from where the shot was taken for the Mendes goal

also possibly didn't bother actually paying much attention to it because there is no way that a professional keeper will ever drop this ball over the line amirite

Is there cheating in baseball besides steroids?

^Yes. Historically there have been things like spitballs and scuffed balls (which add a ton of unnatural spin to a pitch making it nearly unhittable) cork inserted into bats (giving the bat more "spring" when it makes contact with the ball causing it to go much farther) and stealing signs given by both the catcher calling the pitch and the third base coach about whether the batter should bunt. I'm sure there are more examples. Some old salty baseball guys live by the motto that if you're not cheating, you're not trying. I know spit- scuffed-balls and corked bats are illegal, not sure about stolen signs. However, if you are accused of stealing signs by the other team, the next batter for your team is going to get a fastball right in his earhole.

DJ Mencap OTM re: Carroll incident. The referee and linesman could scarcely have been further from the action and so had to make a call on something they couldn't see. It was a jaw dropping few seconds: first an outrageous shot somehow being on target, then an outrageously bad goalkeeping error, then an outrageously wrong refereeing decision.

If they eradicated bad refereeing from sports, pfunkboy would have nothing to post about on footballing threads :-)

I like old-school cheating in baseball, I appreciate the creativity. My favorite story was the (perhaps apocryphal) one about the guy who put a partially filled tube of mercury in his bat.

Ladies and gentlemen, ronaldo.gif .

http://i41.tinypic.com/11r3skn.gif

it's very hard to imagine a ref or linesman not giving that goal to, say, wayne rooney in the circumstances. anyway, it's not really a debate about cheating as such so probably off topic a little.

pretty sure there's a faction of cycling fans that think doping is now just part of the deal, and that the sooner we come to grips with it, the sooner we can all stop caring so much

That's essentially why NFL players have gotten a free pass while baseball players get crucified: fans have pretty much accepted that to play such a brutal sport you'd have to be an idiot not to be on steroids. The unspoken understanding is that it's part of the game.

if they wanted to, most major sports could drastically reduce the amount of diving, flopping, dangerous play etc at their top level, by simply saying that if there is video evidence that it occurred, the player would be suspended for the next game

MattDC is totally on the money that this creates weird crises of legitimacy, and I think the real effect of that goes way beyond the authority of referees -- it could wind up destroying the legitimacy of actual game results. I mean, basically ... imagine an important game, dramatically close, coming toward its end, in which a player does some subtle illegal thing that goes unnoticed in the moment by referees. And imagine that this thing is later clearly identified on video. Based on what you're saying above, the league (or whatever) is officially penalizing the player. But if they're acknowledging punishable wrongdoing, then isn't the score kinda bunk? What if the wrongdoing was, like, crucial and critical, and directly involved in point-scoring and deciding the game? It's kinda complicated to acknowledge that a result was based on rule-breaking but still honor and ratify the result.

Whereas it works pretty well to say that the way the thing is officiated in the moment -- without or without instant replays or anything else during the game -- is the way it is, and once the game is called, that is it. If you get later argument or evidence about a disputed point, well, it's over, a final call was made, and the potential wrongness of that call is just part of the game. This kinda ... acknowledges uncertainty and stabilizes it, you know?

(although to be honest I think most sports leagues, if some kind of really dirty/unsportsmanlike thing came up on video that fans really didn't like, would feel free to take some kind of action against the player -- not so much in a rules-of-the-game way but just in a general PR and "sportsmanship" sense, like in the style of NBA player fines)

See Dwight Howard last night.

the other argument (one which i feel is more valid, tbh) against retrospective punishment by video highlight is that it gives advantage (in a league system) against the team who suffered the initial offence- the player concerned will be unavailable for a couple of games against other teams, but that's not really any value and may be directly disadvantageous to team a against whom the original offence was committed.

http://img46.exs.cx/img46/8976/carroll21jv.gif

i don't agree that acknowledging an officiating mistake in a game after the fact in any way invalidates the result though. but if you do believe this, then video analysis in real time (or as closely as possible) is surely the best way around it, unless you advocate never using available evidence aftera match to punish miscreants

xposts onimo u breakin hart man

i don't agree that acknowledging an officiating mistake in a game after the fact in any way invalidates the result though.

uh

what if that officiating mistake......invalidates the result???

no way can you change the result of a game after the fact.

stfu bill

well, i think maybe mendes' 'goal' as shown above is the closest argument i've ever seen to an argument for a game's result to be changed after the fact (in terms of officiation fuckup)- ball well over the line, maybe two minutes to play in the game.

it was spurs tho, so there was probably time enough for utd to win three one after that.

it was an argument, btw

i think the human element of umpiring is part of what makes baseball so compelling, and there are lots of things that teams do to take advantage of that that could be considered "cheating" that has become an innate, important part of the game. things like the catcher subtly moving his glove after catching the pitch to trick the ump into thinking it was a strike when it was a ball, or a fielder acting like he caught a ball for an out when really he caught it off a bounce or whatever.

certain types of cheating are a legitimate skill, same as any other aspect of a sport in many ways, basically? i'd go with that, i think.

yeah esp. with regard to pitchers and doctoring the ball and stuff

in baseball that is

i don't agree that acknowledging an officiating mistake in a game after the fact in any way invalidates the result though.

I don't entirely get this. Or maybe it's just a matter of semantics. But really, as soon as there's an officiating "error," from that moment forward, everything's changed. And once you open the door to reviewing and trying to "correct" that error, it becomes totally reasonable for fans to suppose that everything that happened afterward was equally in error, totally built on an error. And this totally erodes the validity of the result, as far as fans are concerned. If you decide, the day after a football game, that there was an important penalty on the play that led to the winning touchdown, then how do you let the touchdown stand?

I mean, if you have a stop-and-start game and fans don't get too annoyed by delays, the best you can do is something like the NFL used to, where the occasional close call gets reviewed on tape just for ... informational purposes. But once the game resumes, that's just it; there's no way to fix things in terms of game rules that doesn't create some serious issues of consequence and epistemology and whatnot. The best apparent solution is to give authority to referees in the moment and have that just be the final call -- a fallible call but at least a final one, and presumably fallible in a "fair" way. Then fans can blame their errors but at least accept that those errors are a legitimate part of the system. (And, like I said, if you catch something really unpleasant you can punish it in a sort of personal/professional way that's not really related to the course of gameplay.)

^^ I will choke on these words when they introduce Alternate-Timeline Parallel-Universe-ball

i think you could incorporate a system of video calls for major events (a predefined set) into a fast flowing game- as stated, it works quite well in rugby. i disagree that the best way of dealing with human error in officiating is to embrace and accept it, to make it 'part of the game', as human error (in the football i watch, at least) seems to consistenyl be a less than perfectly random factor.

stfu bill

^um, aren't we arguing the same point, you dumbass?

i mean, we're discussing it like there's a 'right result' that is produced by perfect refereeing decisions and where human officiating is a negligible input. i accept that this is not likely to be a regularly achieved occurrence, but i do think that there's something to be said for a system of checks into major game-changing decisions.

i think yr average sports fan accepts the fact that refs are going to get things wrong sometimes--checks and balances would be kind of lame

http://i.cdn.turner.com/sivault/multimedia/photo_gallery/0805/biggest.no.calls/images/hull.4.jpg

They ended up changing that in the crease rule after the fact. For the truly egregious, check the '85 World Series with the cards and the Royals. I would never advocate changing a game's result, but if anyone should be it's that one.

If you can incorporate some kind of video officiating into any game, sure, but consider that this is no different at all from human officiating. I mean, better angles and better eyesight and this amazing potential of rewinding and whatnot, but some human still needs to look at it and decide what happens, and they need to do so at a pace that matches the game. (The thing I'm saying is unworkable is doing much responding to later review, like after the game -- involve any technology you want, but you still need a human being who makes an evaluation more or less on the spot, and once that evaluation is made and the game's continued, you just can't really go back as an official body and re-investigate.)

well, yeah- all they can do is punish the individual involved retrospectively, ands while that's arguably a deterrent it doesn't fix a result. that's why i'd argue it's vital to improve the officiating, and although you'd say otherwise i think your last post spells out a number of key areas where video access can do this without much invasion.

^^ I will choke on these words when they introduce Alternate-Timeline Parallel-Universe-ball

― nabisco, Wednesday, 29 April 2009 21:10 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

darraghmac can console himself in the knowledge that in a parallel universe that goal stood, Mendes went on to become bigger than Beckham, Spurs scraped into the UEFA Cup and went on to win it, and Jol is still not out.

The really annoying thing about that Mendes goal is that it would pretty much have been goal of the season had it been allowed. And we would have qualified for Europe that year.

Haha did the shot actually travel as far as the goalline without Carroll's helpful hands?

A safe catch that the keeper throws over his own shoulder is never goal of the season, no matter how audacious the attempt.

bentley 09 nevar forget

Surely in soccerball, the biggest problems (dirty Felliani-esque elbows and unseen malice and 'was it over the goalline? decisions) could easily be sorted with a system like they have in rugby? If the opposition really feels that strongly, it goes to a video replay and is sorted in 30 seconds.

With diving I think only the absurdly obvious can be retroactively sorted (like when we played Blackburn and Gamst went all Klinsmann when Sagna was about 3 yards away). I know I'd be up in arms if, say Theo was 50/50 on whether he dived or slipped awkwardly and got a ban for it.

FIFA's never going to do anything about diving, so forget it

All progress depends on the malcontent, Tom.

xxxposts to onimo- in that alternative universe, i probably don't have an ulcer.

as time goes on you'll grow to hate that other darraghmac who's raving about Berbatov's performances in the Champs League semi against Man U.

oh, nobody likes that fucker. i don't pay him any mind when he's talking about either football or social trends.

Somewhere out there there's a me who cancelled a family holiday to go to Seville to watch Celtic humping cheating Porto bastards 3-0. He laughs from afar at the guy who ended up crying into his pint in a bar in Magaluf.

video evidence could have made us those guys, that's my point.

I don't think video evidence would have let me cancel the holiday but I might have had a better time there.

Okay ok - I agree 100% with nabisco that you can't unplay the games or you end up with formula one. The result has to stand. But it still seems really weird - it's almost impossible to watch any sport on TV without at least one clearly, uh, 'unsporting' incident that the ref misses, not through fault, but because there's basically no way he could seen it. Sure, that's the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure there's lots that TV misses too! But it still seems weird when you see something cut and dried 'bad' and everyone is totally chill that nothing should be done?

Okay ok - I agree 100% with nabisco that you can't unplay the games or you end up with formula one. The result has to stand

i'm not accusing anybody of strawmanning, but i don't think anybody has even hinted that this shold be done.

in tennis the most blatant and widespread form of cheating that goes on is on-court coaching (things like "injury" breaks and conveniently timed bathroom breaks are more mild gamesmanship). seeing a coach blatantly signal to his player mid-match really pisses off most tennis fans b/c the essence of the game is that you're out their entirely on your own and you have to figure this out.

with their usual boneheadedness, the WTA's response has been to actually legitimise it at selected tournaments - players can actually call their coach out once per set on a changeover for advice. it's embarrassing for the sport. especially as only the WTA has done it, giving that the impression that women can't think for themselves on court.

The faked injuries in tennis are an embarrassment

sports unfair like life

faking an injury mid-match actually bothers me less than faking an injury to pull out of a tournament, only to show up two days later surfing in hawaii. serena williams, i'm lookin' at you.

we've all pulled sickies before

xpost to Gravel

Well I don't think people are totally happy with the situation and fans and pundits will carp on about it until the cows come home given the chance, but as people have said a line has to be drawn somewhere.

I guess you are coming at it from more of a US perspective, in terms of NFL etc. As a brit, I'm more familiar with football, which is a much simpler game. The opportunities for cheating during play could be reduced down to: diving; dangerous play; shuffling the wall forwards during a direct freekick; placing the ball incorrectly at a setpiece; goalkeeper moving off their line before a penalty is taken; deliberate handball; general unsporting behaviour when you know you have transgressed but playing on regardless (eg playing on from a clearly offside position or when you know the ball has gone out or not admitting that you got the last touch before the ball went out of play).

Now from that list (pardon me if I have missed something) dangerous play I think is the only one that people would seriously want to see retrospective individual punishments for.

The rest of them I think you have to accept that referee's judgement needs to be final and that in professional sport, with so much money involved, it is asking too much of the players to a) not be expected to squeeze every advantage they can out of the grey areas that exist in the intepretation of the laws b) be expected to put their hands up and admit that "yes that did touch me last" or "yes I was in an offside position". Even if they did bring in video calls in football it should be reserved for goal line calls only and maybe suspected "Hand of God" type offences (scoring with the hand or preventing a goal with the hand).

If you tried to micro-manage every decision with video replays then a) the game would be detrimentally slowed down and b) the referee's judgement on the pitch would be fatally undermined. And you couldn't for example use in-play video replays to adjudicate diving offences: not only because they happen so frequently but also because aside from the most blatant ones (which aren't as frequent as you might think) most dives are totally subjective calls that even studio pundits may disagree on, even after viewing a replay numerous times.

The only solution then would be retrospective punishments of such offences, but these would only undermine the overall integrity of the league. If the league suspends a player retrospectively for diving in order to win a penalty that their team subsequently won a match from, then what they are implicitly acknowledging is that the penalty itself is invalid as well as the final result; if that team goes on to win the league, then your saying that that championship in turn is invalid. I think this was probably why there was so much ire over the Carlos Tevez saga because by acknowledging that an offence has been committed but not docking points from WHU the integrity of the entire league was ultimately called into question.

i like the cheating in cricket e.g everyone shouting "RRRUUU URURUU REEEEEEEEEE" whenever a ball does or does not hit someone's foot

The only solution then would be retrospective punishments of such offences, but these would only undermine the overall integrity of the league.

Integrity? The Premiership?

Well quite...

sports unfair like life

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, April 30, 2009 7:13 AM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

One thing in football I'd like to change is how games are timed. Why is it that with 89 minutes gone in a tense cup final only one man knows how long is left to play? Have a visible match clock that stops every time the ball runs out of play and every time the ref blows for a foul.

This would remove uncertainty and allow managers to better plan their substitutions but crucially it would remove my biggest gamesmanship bugbear: dawdling around doing fuck all instead of throwing/kicking the ball into play. You ever notice how a keeper doesn't need a full minute to dig a wee divot to kick a ball out of when his team is losing?

It would also cut down on the magic sponge seekers.

The downside is that every game would take longer until people started getting on with the match and you might get players cramping up and falling over at the thought of actually playing for 90 minutes instead of 65 but here there are two options: 1) fuck 'em or 2) shorten the total match time to 80 minutes - we'd still get 15 minutes extra football.

shorting the game to 30 mins of timed football a half would probably be about right. normally the ball is only in play for about 50 mins anyway, i think.

Why is it that with 89 minutes gone in a tense cup final only one man knows how long is left to play?

That man being Siralex Ferguson of course

One thing in football I'd like to change is how games are timed. Why is it that with 89 minutes gone in a tense cup final only one man knows how long is left to play? Have a visible match clock that stops every time the ball runs out of play and every time the ref blows for a foul.

but liverpool will never win dis ting if this happens..

This commentator certainly doesn't approve of cheating.

^ always a winner on every thread, that one. BIG RED CARD RIGHT UP YOUR ARSE!

Seriously, that might be my favourite thing on the whole internet.

(I just try to forget about how Celtic missed the resultant penalty, not that it mattered anyway)

I've listened to that track three times and I'm still hearing, "And that is a fucking sendin'-off, cheating-hand bastard, if you ever saw one." Is that...roughly correct?

cheating HUN bastard.

Hun = derogatory term for Rangers fan/player/associate/hanger-on

incidentally that video is the first hit for "hun bastard" on youtube.

on google even.

Hun = derogatory term for Rangers fan/player/associate/hanger-on

^what's the provenance of that? like Attila the Hun?

Aye, I think so.

lol @ wiki entry for "hun"

See also
Hunnic Empire
Turkic Khaganate
Nomadic empire
Oghur
Uar
Bulgars
Avars
Xionites
Hephthalites
Indo-Sassanids
List of Hunnic Rulers
Cavalry
Horse archery
Hungarians
Rangers F.C.

Teh internets says:

Celtic are called tims based on an amalgamation of Catholic gangs who called themselves the 'Tim Malloys' from the Calton area of Glasgow in the early 1900's.

Rangers are called hun from the word 'Hanoverian' - protestant monarchy from Hanover, Germany who came to the British throne in 1714 with King George 1st, which in turn led to the Jacobite rebellion.

I have always really liked the fact that soccer timekeeping is vague and mysterious, and I think it fits well with the kind of end-of-game play involved (as opposed to the kind of protracted strategic clock-managing stuff that happens in other sports).

This, by the way:

If the league suspends a player retrospectively for diving in order to win a penalty that their team subsequently won a match from, then what they are implicitly acknowledging is that the penalty itself is invalid as well as the final result; if that team goes on to win the league, then your saying that that championship in turn is invalid.

exactly what I was trying to get at

everyone will know it was 'invalid' in that sense anyway- you guys may never have heard of manchester united, but they win entire leagues this way. the organisation in question just trying to jump in front of the incident and wave 20 million witnesses away isn't going to change that. acknowledging the error needn't necessarily end in a changed or invalid result, but simply ignoring the error amounts to the same thing as approving of it in particularly blatant/obvious cases.

Not read all of this but I think video refereeing has a definite part to play in Football. In the majority of games there are really one or two really key decisions that would need appeal so an introduction of something comparable to Tennis whereby you are given a restricted number of challenges to line calls per set would be fine (translating to Football you'd have one challenge per half; its not as if it would take that much longer to refer to the assistant than the time it would take for the players who were at the wrong end of a decision to stop whining to the main ref about a blatant penalty that wasn't given)