The Roar
The Roar

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Acting and diving not winning 'footy' fans over anytime soon

Roar Rookie
1st July, 2014
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Roar Rookie
1st July, 2014
86
1086 Reads

Many football fans wonder why supporters of the NRL and AFL continue to love their own codes, but continue to bring hate on the world game.

We recognise that converting these people and getting them to attend a round-ball contest is one of the most vital parts of growing the game in Australia.

What better way to have a crack at converting these people than through watching the World Cup. It is a time when even Channel Seven is happy to recognise and report that football exists.

Everyone is watching.

Most of people I’m friends with are die-hard footy lovers. But the past few weeks, all of their attention has been focused on the world’s biggest sporting event. We also have one or two self proclaimed ‘soccer experts’ trying to tell me who’s playing well and who’s going to win and why, which is a good thing albeit frustrating.

We will be watching a match and discussing it all in a positive manner, until of course some bloke falls over cringing in pain holding a part of his body that wasn’t even close to the player that fouled him. This is then followed by the same group of people venting their disgust and highlighting that this is exactly why this is a terrible sport.

But can we really blame them?

On Tuesday morning France took on Nigeria which proved to be a good contest. Ogenyi Onazi, a Nigerian midfielder collided with French player Paul Pogba, claimed to be seriously hurt. The medical team acted appropriately by stretchering Onazi off, as you would do if one of your players claimed they were in agony. Not long after being stretchered off, Onazi returned to his feet, and not long after again, he returned to the field and played like he had never been touched.

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To top things off, Onazi was involved in another incident, this time having his shin crunched by Blaise Matuidi and carried off once again. But this time he was subbed off, it was probably because he actually hurt himself, but I suggest the medical staff were just sick of carrying him around and just kept him off.

Chances are, if you seriously hurt enough to be stretchered off, you’re probably not in any state to return back to playing anytime soon, especially not in the few minutes straight after being carried off.

FIFA have come out so many times and said they don’t condone this type of behaviour as well as diving. They have said it is a blight on the game. So why is there not being any action taken?

They’ve said that refs are going to knuckle down on simulation and give cards against it, but this has not happened in this World Cup.

It is either a penalty, or it is simulation. But in order to stop the players that bruise easy and recover even easier, FIFA needs to step in and put in a rule stating that if you call a stretcher and are carried off, you are unable to return to play and must be subbed.

They must also put in a time-limit a player can be down for, let’s say a minute, after this minute, a stretcher is automatically called, resulting in the player going off and being automatically subbed, regardless injured or not.

For me, diving isn’t that much of a problem. If it doesn’t affect the result of a match that a player might over-exaggerate a challenge just to get the ref’s attention, I’m not going to kick up that much of a fuss.

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The problem for me is the players who take this dive, but continue faking it by rolling around on the ground, cringing their face in an attempt to fool everyone on the pitch, which is not only disrespectful to the opposition but to everyone else on the pitch.

I can’t blame my friends for losing their cool about diving in football. But I just hope the positives can outweigh the negatives at what has been an amazing World Cup so far.

I hope the tournament can turn some once-in-every-four-years football fans into general part-time football fans, before turning them into full-time football fans.

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