When it comes to diving, football has a chip on its shoulder

Roar Pro

By Michael C, 7 Nov 2008 The Crowd is a Roar Pro

Tagged:: Adam Gilchrist, Brent Harvey, John ONeill

An article by Michael Lynch in the Melbourne Age on November 6 is the ultimate best of both worlds. Lynch has lined up everyone, the oval ball codes, cricket, and others, and then concedes that the diving culture needs to change.

I hope Mr Lynch’s cake was tasty.

He writes: “It’s a bad, bad look, and one that all too often gives head-in-the-sand opponents of soccer a free kick to indulge their mindless criticism.”

Okay, so, admittedly, it’s a ‘bad, bad look’, but he still claims that it’s pandering to ‘opponents’ of football and supporting ‘mindless criticism’. Either, it’s mindless, and therefore false, or there’s an element of reasonable concern about it all.

We don’t all have to be 150 percent exclusive and dedicated followers of a game to be able to make an observation.

I would have thought Lynch might have realised by now that there’s a lot of people who really don’t mind football, though it may not be their number one football code. Perhaps, to him, that defines them as “head-in-the-sand opponents.”

However, the general consensus seems to be that in football, a game that can all too often be decided by a single goal, so the potential reward can be too great a temptation to not have a go at a penalty area dive, or at drawing a red card on an opponent.

Followers of other sports aren’t fools.

We understand that honesty is a luxury. Not every cricketer ‘walks’ like Adam Gilchrist. And nor should they. The umpire is there to ‘judge’.

Mr Lynch has his go at followers of all the other codes until finally he states that “cultures can change. Pay no heed to those who claim that taking retrospective disciplinary action is against the spirit of soccer. Cheating is even more so.”

FFA, which brings a disciplinary culture from other sporting codes (in Buckley’s case, from AFL, in his predecessor John O’Neill’s, rugby union) has been accused of “not understanding the spirit of soccer. In this instance, that’s an advantage.”

I’m left trying to work out whether Lynch just fully justified the opinions of the people he was attacking?

It seems that there is still a thin-skinned element in the football fraternity who just don’t like the message coming externally. It doesn’t matter whether the message is right or wrong, constructive or not.

It’s time for the victim mentality to be put back in the cupboard. It’s not very dignified.

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The Crowd Says (15) | Page 1 of Comments

NUFCMVFC said | November 7th 2008 @ 6:03am | Report comment

Simulation is bad, people from within the game realise that

Regarding Buckley, there are a lot of stupid things coming from AFL and some Rugby types in football now, like stupid names to teams for example and a quite frankly arrogant and disrespectful attitude to our sports fan culture, but in this instance taking an AFL tribunal approach may not be so bad, even though it is bad in other instances

Fact is, it is a frowned upon part of our game, just as there is frowned upon parts of other sports games, and Lynch is merely fending off the pathetic people who will take any oppurtunity to have a dig, for eexample teh AFL journalists who hang around A League games hoping for trouble they can hype up

Take you condscending rubbish and put THAT back in the cupboard, the underhand spite of AFL establishment is not very dignified

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Michael C said | November 7th 2008 @ 8:26am | Report comment

NUFCMVFC -

how do you figure to blame the AFL for ‘stupid names’ for teams? Surely the FFA are independant, and Buckley is but one person, surely the new franchises name themselves independantly too?? Personally, I have for some time been annoyed with the American style names – - based on some of their meaningless basketball and NFL franchise marketing ‘brands’. Really not sure how you figure to blame the AFL or any AFL culture on that front???

re Lynch – - – you don’t take a position in a debate by stating that everyone is stupid for saying point A, and then acknowledging that point A is really quite a valid concern and that it requires action, is getting action, and some of the better action is perhaps based on the external perspectives of those very people you’ve had a go at in the first place for saying point A.

Got nothing to do with what you’re going on about – - got more to do with Lynch ranting mindlessly himself and making an absolute dill of himself…………in the Age who sponsor MVFC and therefore, this is a fine example of soccer friendly media publishing absolute drivel.

btw –

My article WAS edited…………all my references so SOCCER got changed to ‘Football’ without in qualification.

I completely disagree with theRoar editors on this point. Football in Australia accounts for 4 major codes, one of which is actually known as ‘Australian Football’ and whose major league is the ‘Australian Football League’. I don’t appreciate the agenda driven editing of an article to amend the clearly obvious ‘soccer’ to an ambiguous and superficially meaningless ‘football’.

It SHOULD be noted that the only references to ‘soccer’ NOT amended by theRoar editors were in fact direct quotes from the article where Michael Lynch himself used ‘soccer’. For anyone curious, read the article and note how Lynch at very least consistantly avoided the use of an unqualified ‘football’. He repeatedly refered to ‘soccer’, and specifically to the ‘football federation Australia’ and ‘oval-ball football codes’. Seems even his mindless rant was more ‘real’ than the attitudes of theRoar editors.

Crazy!!!!!

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NUFCMVFC said | November 7th 2008 @ 8:48am | Report comment

What if it was a discussion piece by Lynch and not an opinion piece though?

Regarding the term “Soccer” used in the article, perhaps that is the Age Editors changing it from football to Soccer? The name changing works in several directions really

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Michael C said | November 7th 2008 @ 9:04am | Report comment

NUFCMVFC -

re the Age editors, that’s an unknown. The work of theRoar editors IS a known. In this case. We can speculate about the Age all we like.

Discussion vs opinion, well, the article was in the general sports – soccer section. Mr.Lynch has his own ‘Lynchpin’ blogs/opinion section. In reality I saw the article as something deserving no better than being in his blog/opinion section, because as a serious sports article – it’s seriously deficient.

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Con Stamocostas said | November 7th 2008 @ 2:12pm | Report comment

Good article Michael,

I reckon this outcry over diving is just a casualty of the football wars and Football (soccer) insecurity at it’s place in the Australian sports landscape.

The outrage makes me laugh. I like the quote going around “Australians don’t like cheats”

ummm Sahne Warne twice; giving information to an Indian bookmaker, then the steriods his mum gave him. But Australian sport fans exhalt him like a God with books and statues and beer ads and more beer ads and poker games.

I would say that Australians love cheats we just don’t like foreign cheats!!!

We are a country founded by cheats. The English cheated the land off the Aborigines. Terra Nullius anyone?

I’m sure other cultures don’t like cheating either. I’m sure other football cultures don’t like diving either. To say we need a ban on diving is to say we need to ban human nature. It’s just not going to happen.

And the biggest part of the game is decieving your opponent. Through a feint or other measures and sometimes that is diving.

boo hoo other codes use it as fodder to attack our game.

Let them attack the game they always will. But when we qualify for the world cup they will all join the bandwagon and support Australia, they will be at live sites or in pubs across the country. Many will even fly to South Africa, Australians are good at joining a party and when it’s over they will go back to their insular sports and cry about diving when it rears it’s ugly head again.

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Pippinu said | November 7th 2008 @ 2:35pm | Report comment

Con
are you one of the SFC bloggers on FFT?

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Millster said | November 7th 2008 @ 2:42pm | Report comment

Look, on this issue I think Lynch has tied himself into a knot. The answer is that:

1. yes football cannot leave the issue of diving unaddressed, and that both in-game and post-game solutions need to be included in the fix. I also agree that cheating is more important to fix is such a low scoring game as football as the ipact of one unjust goal is huge

and

2. yes football is subject to crude and uneducated stereotyping around this issue from followers of other codes and sports in which forms of cheating (diving, milking, stomping, false appeals, etc) are equally entrenched, and so football is right in pointing out the hypocrisy in those critics

On the naming issue my only input is that it is a privilege not a right that we have to be blogging here. The people running this site have chosen a nomenclature, reflected in the tabs for each sport, and it is probably best if we show good grace and follow that when we are their guests here. On the broader issue, we’ve all written too many words on it and my feeling is whatever we say, argue or agree, just like any other part of language the community will evolve towards a resolution of this over the coming 10-20 years.

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Michael C said | November 7th 2008 @ 2:55pm | Report comment

Millster -

re the naming, that’s easy for you to say when you’re in a position of belief that soccer is going to be driven out and ‘football’ will become the domain of ‘association football’ followers to the point that we’re going to have to put up with everyone refering to the footy as ‘Rules’………………groan!!! sounds like living in Sydney!!!, if I wanted to do that………….I’d be up there……in more ways than one.;-)

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Millster said | November 7th 2008 @ 3:12pm | Report comment

MC – I will concede that it probably looks like a bigger issue to you than to me. Here in Sydney, the words Rugby, AFL, League and football already have their own spaces fairly well defined (well except for football / footy to old farts out west still meaning RL) as we have a very fragmented landscape. When I go to Perth however its a bit more like what you’d experience and my friends continually correct themselves along the lines of “…football… I mean AFL…”

You’re right in saying I’m in a position of belief but to be truthful I’d accept it if it went the other way. I’m not one to see any inherent shame in the word “soccer” and I use it in those instances where it is required. So I’m not 100% dogmatic on the issue. My opinon and bias is based mainly on what seems like a good logic to me that the most generic name should apply to the most global / wide-spread game, and that the more niche a game gets the more specific its description needs to be. But its an issue that I was grumpy about 4-5 years back but to be honest now am much more chilled about.

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Con Stamocostas said | November 7th 2008 @ 3:35pm | Report comment

Pippinu said | Today | Report comment

Con
are you one of the SFC bloggers on FFT?

Yep the same one.

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