Patrick Collins On Football Thuggery

[White Noise]

Football is condoning thuggery at its peril


By Patrick Collins


Last updated at 9:10 PM on 9th October 2010


The old boys are preparing for an exhausting season. Their days will be spent on the motorways, their nights in charmless function rooms.

And there, after chewing the rubber chicken and swilling the house red, they will climb to their feet and tell their lurid lies.
'The day I kicked Bestie ... blood on my studs at Elland Road ... the night I made Nobby cry ... the next time I kicked Bestie.' And so on. There will be descriptions of cheating Spaniards, cowardly Italians and foppish Frenchmen who squealed all the way to the casualty ward.
Horror injury: Manchester City's Nigel De Jong challenges Newcastle's Hatem Ben Arfa
And, inevitably, there will be a dissertation on how football has changed. How 'they' are trying to make it a non-contact sport, how nobody tackles any more, how we must return to the old ways, when men were men, and referees were impotent, and tackles from behind were virtually compulsory.

And when a genius like George Best could be kicked and clattered on a weekly basis by crude and talentless thugs until, too early, he departed the game he had graced and sought his consolation in the bottle.
There is no need to name the people peddling this trash, since we all know who they are. But what should disturb us is the reaction they will receive. Every blood-curdling cliche will be met with a knowing grin.

Every assault, every sleazy account of actual bodily harm will provoke a tremor of approval. For a section of this country's football public truly believes that this is the way the sport ought to go.
Controversial: Kevin Davies says football is at risk of becoming a non-contact sport

So Danny Murphy's warning may well be ignored, yet his words are well chosen. 'The pace in which some players go into tackles is ridiculous,' says the Fulham midfielder.

'I don't believe players are going out to break another player's leg but there has to be some logic and intelligence involved.

'If you are going at someone at a certain pace and you don't get it right, you are going to hurt them. Players need to show a little bit more intelligence, especially the ones who are doing it repeatedly.'

Quite so, and no serious observer could argue with a word of those sentiments. Which brings us to Kevin Davies, the Bolton striker belatedly and curiously enlisted by England, who says: 'With the speed of the game today you are going to be a little bit out in a few tackles.

'I take a lot of hits myself but I don't complain about it. It's a part of the game I enjoy. The physical side is going out of football at the moment.'
Hitting back: Fulham's Danny Murphy (right) says refs must clamp down on rash tackles
It is an interesting contribution from the school of hard knocks. He should try it on Hatem Ben Arfa, of Newcastle, whose season was ended by the grotesquely unpenalised challenge of that nice Nigel de Jong, of Manchester City, last weekend.

Or the uncomplaining Davies might seek the reaction of Wigan's Jordi Gomez, who was flipped like a pancake by a scandalously reckless tackle from Karl Henry, of Wolves.

Actions have consequences; the more violent the action, the more extreme the consequence. The modern game is infinitely faster than the game we watched a generation ago and the players are incomparably stronger.

However, bones are pretty much the same, ligaments have not changed and the impact of thrusting studs upon knees or shins or ankles is as dramatically damaging as it was back in the good old days.

And we have to protect vulnerable players from these cynical and brutal attacks, just as we should have protected artists like Best all those years ago.
Seeing red: Karl Henry of Wolves was sent off for this challenge on Wigan's Jordi Gomez

The people who recognise the direction in which we are heading — people like the Professional Footballers' Association chief executive, Gordon Taylor, with a duty of care to his members — have already warned of the dangers.

Certain managers, most notably Arsene Wenger, of Arsenal, and Roberto Martinez, of Wigan, have risked abuse and derision by registering their objection to the trend.

Others, the usual dim and disreputable suspects, have simply blamed referees for their failure to prevent footballers from behaving like butchers.

We must not overstate our case. We are not contemplating Armageddon, nor even a return to the brutalities of 20, 30, 40 years ago. But we are running the risk of making the game more oafish, more callous and far more hazardous than it needs to be.

It is time that we opted for a more civilised direction. And if that means that the next generation will be denied their diet of rubber-chicken rantings, then so very much the better.

PS....
If justice is done, then England will stage the 2018 World Cup. The bid is excellent and the nation is ready. Yet the courtship must be conducted with care.

Last week, England 2018 published 18 key commitments. They included facilities, stadia, legacy, all that high-minded stuff.

Yet the most important pledge was contained in a single, seductive sentence: 'Journey times for FIFA Executive Committee members will be a maximum of 30 minutes from hotel to stadium on match days in London, and a maximum of 20 minutes outside London.'

So vote for England, chaps. You know it makes sense.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1319164/PATRICK-COLLINS-Football-condoning-thuggery-peril.html#ixzz11yIm4qXq

[LBNo11]

...a well written piece and one I cannot argue with. Brute force versus skill, the beautiful game or a hideous free-for-all. I used to play two codes of football, and still watch both, and the old adage seems to be what the managers like all-lardyce, mccarthorse etc., take a certain amount of pride in, and condone:-

Rugby is a game for hooligans - played by gentlemen.

Football is a game for gentlemen - played by hooligans...

[FatFreddysCat]

To be honest most of you who have played sunday league football have kicked the poo out of other teams, it's just the way it was, if you went 4 games without a mass brawl it was a miracle. Wolves/ Stoke and Blackburn were tame in comparison. Sunday football was like that ice hockey film Slap Shot without the sticks and the geeky glasses .

[LBNo11]

...you have hit the nail on the head Freddy, that sort of football is what those of low level  of skill and tactics resort to.

The point is that not many of us would pay to watch that sort of football in the premiership, I saw enough of that in the lower leagues, and if I am going to have to watch teams in the premiership play that type of football I would expect to pay a lot less for a ticket for those games...

[FatFreddysCat]

...you have hit the nail on the head Freddy, that sort of football is what those of low level  of skill and tactics resort to.

The point is that not many of us would pay to watch that sort of football in the premiership, I saw enough of that in the lower leagues, and if I am going to have to watch teams in the premiership play that type of football I would expect to pay a lot less for a ticket for those games...[/q        Ah the old backhanded  English compliment, that (the A buttons gone again) mkes you think your great untill you think about it. Yep i was  a proper clogger, but i wish i'd have played proper football, as i got older, i stopped the kicking crap  and realised i wasn't that bad  a player, i was players player of the year a few times, and that's the one that mattered to me, and there was much more naturally gifted players in the team.

[LBNo11]

...Freddy, I was no more than your average sunday footballer, a centre-half who played fair (if they played fair against me) but I tolerated a lot of abuse before I would get 'stuck in'.

I came across opponents who could jump higher than me and who were faster than me, so I tried to read the game better, to look for space that the opponents could use and anticipate their moves to make up for their pace.

I was good at tackles and learned to look at the ball not the player which meant I had a good success rate for dispossessions.

These guys get paid an awful lot of money, but are seemingly not encouraged to try and learn from their mistakes and improve themselves, so they get money for old rope as far as I am concerned...