Thursday, March 15

Luck of the Draw

Every time you go to, or sit down to watch, a football match you'd like your team to win. As the legend that is Bill Shankly once said, “If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.”. Nuff said. However I think that news today that the Football League board is to consider a proposal to scrap draws and decide matches by penalty shoot-outs (and not, just in finals you understand, in every game) can only be proposed by someone who completely missing the point of the game.

Yes, we have all seem some dull score and no-score draws. It's horrible when a team comes to your ground to play for a point (this strategy being preferred by some of the smaller teams, e.g. Everton). However there have been some phenomenal draws, real end to end stuff with both teams absolutely going for it and both keepers pulling out some fantastic saves.

This sort of proposal must be tabled by people who look at the results, not the match itself, and seeing 0 - 0 or a 1 - 1 must think "Blimey, what a boring game".

There are, apparently, two proposals that will be considered - a traditional penalty shoot-out or where a player would have eight seconds to try and score after receiving the ball on the half-way line.

Seriously, are they on smack?

If you're going to go down this route, then why don't we dispense with the whole ninety minutes of normal time altogether? You could get to the ground, find your seat, sit down and applaud politely as you watch both teams file onto the pitch. The two captains could then be taken to the centre circle and proceed to flip a coin. Best of three wins the game, and takes the three points. If you wanted to introduce some element of skill into it, I guess you could have the two captain's engage in a thrilling "winner-takes-all" spectacle of rock-paper-scissors. Then players of both teams can then shake hands politely, admit it was a tough fixture before scurrying back to the changing rooms for ten past three to do interviews before still having time to take the WAGs shopping before Harvey Nicks shuts.

I cannot believe this is even being discussed, and I'm hoping that the Football League board will simply laugh this suggestion out of the meeting.

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1 Comments:

Blogger DrLargePants said...

The do this in MLS, but then they're Americans so what do they know...

err, oops!

12:05 pm  

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