As I watched the DPR Korean women’s football team walk off the Ballymore pitch during Saturday’s international friendly against the Matildas, my first thought was, “They can’t actually be walking off. This has to be a joke!”
Then, as I watched the 11 red shirts congregate at the side of pitch, it was quite obvious they were deadly serious.
What sparked this was a contentious penalty referee Sara Hodson awarded to the Matildas on the shadows of halftime. Don’t get me wrong, it was a ridiculous decision and all subsequent replays showed it to be the mistake that it was. However, all that pales when you look at the reaction of the visitors. Trotting off the pitch and for intents and purposes sulking at the sideline after being called off by their officials.
Moving into the Asian confederation has not been all smooth sailing for the Matildas, and this is not the first such incident. There was the infamous 2009 brawl the Young Matildas were involved with against the Chinese, but as national team coach Tom Sermanni mentioned on the broadcast, this is appears more to be rule than the exception. “It’s interesting this has happened on home soil. We have to deal with this when we take teams into Asia…there have things far worse that have happened. It’s actually good for home supporters to see some of what we have to deal with.”
This is not the first time the DPR Korean women’s team has behaved disgracefully, and now that the Korean’s have walked the walk, it is time for FIFA to do the same. Their motto is ‘fair play’ and they have already had one opportunity to live their creed and many agree that during the “Hand of Frog” debacle, they failed. Whilst this is nowhere near the same scale, if FIFA are not to be seen as a toothless tiger, DPR Korea has to be sanctioned in some way.
There are always going to be flawed decisions in football (just ask the Irish) but reactions of the Asian teams to this can’t be be in the spirit of ‘Fair Play’. While they may have had my sympathy with the referee decision, they lost all my respect with their subsequent decision. Now I wait (breathlessly of course) for any response from FIFA.
Despite all that, I say well done girls on a good 3-2 win in your final hit out together before the AFC Asian Cup.
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The Matilda scored the first two of her team's goals in the 4-0 win.
What if we celebrated all of the achievements big and small, and weeded out those hell-bent on bringing down a game that is doing a hell of a lot right?
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