See, I thought there was both contact and it was a dive. You know you are going to be brought down before it happens quite often ...... weaving into the area you'll often be stumbling anyway ......... The attempted tackle was desperate BUT ........ The trouble is we've reached the point where the player has to go down to get a penalty. If he stands up he has NO chance of a penalty, he is berated by his team and his manager, and commentators and pundits call him a fool. If he goes down and doesn't get a penalty, he gets booked at least (sometimes even if he just falls and hasn't appealed for a penalty), and the crowd goes mental ....... and the incident is replayed forever more. If a forward goes through with a defender kicking seven bells out of him, but stays on his feet and gets a shot in which the goalie saves, he shouldn't be penalised for his HONESTY in playing on despite being fouled, foul/s were committed in the area and the advantage he should gain is a penalty kick.
The big clubs all try to win penalties and pressurise the ref' if they are struggling ...... not just Chelsea. I'm only guessing Snoots, but I think Huddersfield might do it to Chesterfield if they were struggling to beat us, just as we'd do it to Gresley Rovers .......
You can get a penalty for a shirt pull in the area without going down, but a trip in a tackle? If the forward tries to keep his feet how often will it be given? We're talking blue moons here. Diving exist because the way the rules were interpreted encouraged it.
And while I'm at it if you've played as much rugby as I have you'll realise it is exceeding difficult to pull another man to the ground only be grabbing his shirt. Even a rugby shirt will sometimes give way before the man. BUT in football players hit the deck on a regular basis following a slight tug at their collar. They ARE diving, but we can see they have been fouled because we can see what happened to the shirt. Now what is the difference between that and a player who has been tripped but need not have fallen? If shirt-tugging were a way of bringing a player down rugby players would have cottoned on.
I agree with Pooch, if we are going to use this technology we need to sort out when and how, so everyone involved and watching knows and is aware of what is happening. But VAR is only a shambles in so far as the game itself is a shambles.
If football involved some notion of sportsmanship beyond giving the ball back to a team that had to kick it out to get attention for an injured colleague, we might begin to get somewhere. Snooker players will call fouls against themselves with thousands of pounds involved. Mats Wilander refused to take a point which would have won him the French Open Tennis Championships and INSISTED on the point being replayed. Imagine a centre forward insisting the penalty he's just been awarded was unjust, because he simply fell, and imagine the furore if he then decided to roll the penno deliberately wide. The Corinthians used to be so ashamed of having a penalty awarded against them their keeper would lean on the post and leave the goal unguarded. There IS just an option to play fair.
The big clubs all try to win penalties and pressurise the ref' if they are struggling ...... not just Chelsea. I'm only guessing Snoots, but I think Huddersfield might do it to Chesterfield if they were struggling to beat us, just as we'd do it to Gresley Rovers .......
You can get a penalty for a shirt pull in the area without going down, but a trip in a tackle? If the forward tries to keep his feet how often will it be given? We're talking blue moons here. Diving exist because the way the rules were interpreted encouraged it.
And while I'm at it if you've played as much rugby as I have you'll realise it is exceeding difficult to pull another man to the ground only be grabbing his shirt. Even a rugby shirt will sometimes give way before the man. BUT in football players hit the deck on a regular basis following a slight tug at their collar. They ARE diving, but we can see they have been fouled because we can see what happened to the shirt. Now what is the difference between that and a player who has been tripped but need not have fallen? If shirt-tugging were a way of bringing a player down rugby players would have cottoned on.
I agree with Pooch, if we are going to use this technology we need to sort out when and how, so everyone involved and watching knows and is aware of what is happening. But VAR is only a shambles in so far as the game itself is a shambles.
If football involved some notion of sportsmanship beyond giving the ball back to a team that had to kick it out to get attention for an injured colleague, we might begin to get somewhere. Snooker players will call fouls against themselves with thousands of pounds involved. Mats Wilander refused to take a point which would have won him the French Open Tennis Championships and INSISTED on the point being replayed. Imagine a centre forward insisting the penalty he's just been awarded was unjust, because he simply fell, and imagine the furore if he then decided to roll the penno deliberately wide. The Corinthians used to be so ashamed of having a penalty awarded against them their keeper would lean on the post and leave the goal unguarded. There IS just an option to play fair.