Having watched the Sone Aluko incident (through my green tinted spectacles), I think it was a dive!
I know that the fast track panel of the SFA have investigated this and that Rangers have appealed against the offer of a two match ban.will be investigating. Given the decision with El Hadji Diouf and Madjid Bogherra last season, I wouldn’t expect anything more than a slap on the wrist for the player.
Yesterday morning, I read a quote from the Dunfermline chairman to say that the player shouldn’t get a two match ban. John Yorkston was quoted as saying that if he was caught out for diving by the ref during the match, it would only have been a yellow card.
I wonder if his views will remain the same if his team are relegated and one point instead of none from that match would have been enough to keep them in the league?
If a Celtic player went down in a similar manner, I’d never expect him to win a penalty either and I would fully expect him to be punished appropriately.
Recently, we’ve heard an awful lot about how this new legislation, which is covered by existing law, is designed to clean up Scottish football.
My idea is, why not start on the pitch? A long held view of mine is that if a player is caught diving or cheating, then the player should be given a long ban to stop them from doing it in the future.
If Aluko has cheated, then why not say it’s an automatic five match ban. I say five matches because his (alleged) dive has clearly helped his team win the match.
Yes, Rangers probably would have gone on to beat Dunfermline but without the penalty, each team scored one goal each. I think if a player has dived or cheated, they should be given a three match ban or if the offence gained a winning goal for team, increase it to a five match ban.
Professional players do want to play football so if they cheat and can’t play, then I think it’s going to quickly reduce cheating.
The other option would be to put more responsibility on the club in question to stop their employees from cheating. Like a lot of people, I have a works christmas night out coming up. As it’s an official works night, my employer will be held responsible, by the venue, for any inappropriate behaviour.
If we were to re-score the match based on the result without the cheating, then it would also very quickly stop.
Can you imagine the situation my idea would put the player in? A new guy signs for a club, dives, wins a penalty, the final score is 2-1, he’s found guilty of cheating and the score is reversed to 1-1 and they get one instead of three points? I’m not using this as a scenario that’s happened. I’m just asking what if?
I know the above would be difficult to enforce. Using Celtic and St Johnstone as an example, Celtic are going to have much more cameras in the ground so more chances to find out players guilty so perhaps from that view, it would go against us.
The obvious way round this would be to have the same number of cameras in each ground with the same panel looking over any controversial decisions.
I have got to a stage in football where I would rather see Celtic lose than cheat.
Are my ideas very harsh? Yes, they are. Would they stop diving and cheating in football? Most certainly. Would it affect Celtic and lose us players and points? I sincerely doubt it.
Some may argue that Georgios Samaras went down too easily and got the Inverness player sent off. Others would argue that if you jump into a challenge with your arms up in the air, you deserve to be booked or sent off.
The highly debatable Samaras incident aside, I genuinely can’t think of any recent time (or not so recent time) that a Celtic player has cheated to gain an advantage. That’s why I am confident that such extreme measures would be a good thing.
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Agree with the punishments you propose but I reckon Sammy would only be available to play 5 or 6 games a season with that rule in force. Sometimes his antics are laughable when I see the replays. The game at the weekend proved it, in the second half we won a freekick just outside the box after the defender through in a clumsy tackle, missed both ball and player and them Sammy throuws himself to the ground. Even Naibalance would have been proud of it.
In germany a player punched the ball into the net his team won after the game they seen it on tv banned him and gave the other team a3-1win do not see a lot of cheating now