It is fashionable to blame one sport, the usual suspect, when bad behavior spreads across the spectrum, but the real villain is money
The phrase “we mustn’t become like football” is often muttered in other
sports. Since the 1970s the national game has bristled at the depiction of
“yob ball” as the dumping ground for rudeness, arrogance, contempt for match
officials and now diving and feigning injury.
Guess what: the slogan flipped. “We do want to be like football,” cricket and
rugby began to think. The growing emergency in rugby union over backchat and
thespianism – and the constant bilge of sledging in cricket – prefigure the
day when football can be led slobbering from its dungeon and make eye
contact with other sports.
Why do they suddenly want to “be like football” (the players, that is, not the
administrators)? If people are throwing themselves over and disrespecting
referees in rugby union the blame can hardly be laid at football’s door. To
think a wing at Saracens or Wasps watches Manchester
United’s Ashley Young impersonate a sniper victim and then
auto-copies the crime in Premiership
rugby is daft in every direction.
Football does have its regular convulsions. But its willingness at least to
talk about its problems gives it a head start on rugby and cricket, where
the “hideous energy” (to quote Martin Crowe) of David Warner is supposedly
turning the bat and ball game into a punch up waiting to happen.
Is a columnist allowed to argue in favour of a proper fight instead of the
gargoyle taunting that passes for intensity and passion in modern cricket?
Probably not, but an outbreak of hand-to-hand combat might bring us closer
to a resolution.
In his piece on ESPNCricinfo, Crowe raised the spectre of an opponent
sticking one on Warner at the forthcoming World Cup. An apocalypse from
Crowe’s perspective strikes some of us as the shock the game might need to
confront the sheer vacuity of abusive sledging.
If you need Warner telling an Indian opponent “speak English” to sell your sport then you probably have a problem selling your sport. It heightens the drama only if you are easily excited by blockheads. Its defenders say cricket needs edge, needs hostility. So it does, but Warner and England’s sledgers are not it. They dilute the contest by dragging the focus away from bowler versus batsman to the kind of gobbing-off you see in the high street at kicking-out time.
In the moral realm, football is engaged on countless fronts. Ched Evans, the Malky Mackay texts and Dave Whelan and his “chinks” are among the crossover controversies: the sort that make the Today programme. Beneath those is the hum of weekly fodder: diving, elbows, the crowding of referees, obnoxious chanting, managers slagging off referees, players getting themselves in trouble on Twitter.
In all these areas football is the grizzled vet. Its face reveals a thousand battles. Its arm bears the imprints of Luis Suárez’s teeth. There is not an -ism you can surprise football with. And each time it is dragged out in front of the public by the scruff of the neck and ordered to apologise for its utter degradation. I know, because, like most reporters, I have dragged it out there myself. But let us not confuse Fifa corruption, scandalous ticket-price rises, money gushing into the pockets of agents and obscene weekly wages with the stuff rugby and cricket are now fretting about: individuals, or teams, violating the spirit of the game in ways with which governing bodies are only just starting to get to grips.
Credit, here, to the Rugby Players’ Association, which has called a meeting with referees to discuss injury-feigning and backchat. This is a rare case of a union reporting itself to the authorities – holding out its hands to be cuffed – after an apparent dive by Yoann Huget of Toulouse against Bath prompted the RPA to admit its members have a problem.
“It is pretty commonly rolled out that we are different to football because of the respect shown to referees and it would be a real shame if that was lost,” Christian Day, the RPA chairman, said. “The game is becoming more and more professional, and more and more competitive, and professional people will always look for the edge.”
There – he said it. Rugby is not copying football. It is reading from the script that says: the bigger the rewards, the lower people will stoop to grab them. Mendacity in football is not some virus that passes from sport to sport, through TV screens. There is far more scrutiny, for example, of diving and off-the-ball violence in football than there is of cheating in rugby at the breakdown or in rucks.
As for Warner, the king sledger: Aussie Dave has been told by James Sutherland, Cricket Australia’s chief executive, to “stop looking for trouble”. David Richardson, the International Cricket Council chief executive, went further, tracing the upsurge to the most recent Ashes series. “Over the last three or four months, you have seen 12 ICC code of conduct charges laid against people for exactly that – disrespectful behaviour on the field,” he said.
Fining Warner 50 per cent of his match fee is not going to change his self-image as a renegade whose unpleasantness denotes a refusal to “back down”. Please save us from the loudmouth who thinks loudmouthery is a badge of toughness. Maybe they all want to be like football, deep down, because they want its money. Football is not the source of everyone’s infections.
ALL CREDITS :- http://www.telegraph.co.uk
If you need Warner telling an Indian opponent “speak English” to sell your sport then you probably have a problem selling your sport. It heightens the drama only if you are easily excited by blockheads. Its defenders say cricket needs edge, needs hostility. So it does, but Warner and England’s sledgers are not it. They dilute the contest by dragging the focus away from bowler versus batsman to the kind of gobbing-off you see in the high street at kicking-out time.
In the moral realm, football is engaged on countless fronts. Ched Evans, the Malky Mackay texts and Dave Whelan and his “chinks” are among the crossover controversies: the sort that make the Today programme. Beneath those is the hum of weekly fodder: diving, elbows, the crowding of referees, obnoxious chanting, managers slagging off referees, players getting themselves in trouble on Twitter.
In all these areas football is the grizzled vet. Its face reveals a thousand battles. Its arm bears the imprints of Luis Suárez’s teeth. There is not an -ism you can surprise football with. And each time it is dragged out in front of the public by the scruff of the neck and ordered to apologise for its utter degradation. I know, because, like most reporters, I have dragged it out there myself. But let us not confuse Fifa corruption, scandalous ticket-price rises, money gushing into the pockets of agents and obscene weekly wages with the stuff rugby and cricket are now fretting about: individuals, or teams, violating the spirit of the game in ways with which governing bodies are only just starting to get to grips.
Credit, here, to the Rugby Players’ Association, which has called a meeting with referees to discuss injury-feigning and backchat. This is a rare case of a union reporting itself to the authorities – holding out its hands to be cuffed – after an apparent dive by Yoann Huget of Toulouse against Bath prompted the RPA to admit its members have a problem.
“It is pretty commonly rolled out that we are different to football because of the respect shown to referees and it would be a real shame if that was lost,” Christian Day, the RPA chairman, said. “The game is becoming more and more professional, and more and more competitive, and professional people will always look for the edge.”
There – he said it. Rugby is not copying football. It is reading from the script that says: the bigger the rewards, the lower people will stoop to grab them. Mendacity in football is not some virus that passes from sport to sport, through TV screens. There is far more scrutiny, for example, of diving and off-the-ball violence in football than there is of cheating in rugby at the breakdown or in rucks.
As for Warner, the king sledger: Aussie Dave has been told by James Sutherland, Cricket Australia’s chief executive, to “stop looking for trouble”. David Richardson, the International Cricket Council chief executive, went further, tracing the upsurge to the most recent Ashes series. “Over the last three or four months, you have seen 12 ICC code of conduct charges laid against people for exactly that – disrespectful behaviour on the field,” he said.
Fining Warner 50 per cent of his match fee is not going to change his self-image as a renegade whose unpleasantness denotes a refusal to “back down”. Please save us from the loudmouth who thinks loudmouthery is a badge of toughness. Maybe they all want to be like football, deep down, because they want its money. Football is not the source of everyone’s infections.
ALL CREDITS :- http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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