CROSSING THE LINE: Darren Young’s Column

To Cheat Or Not To Cheat, Or When To Cheat? That Is The Question.

As Shakespeare once said.

‘I did not stab Claudio in the back!’

Anyway, away from football for a moment (bear with me) and to Rugby Union where the World Cup (European) qualifying is in disarray because Belgium beat Spain at the weekend; a result that meant Romania qualified for Japan 2019 automatically while Spain have to go through two-legged play offs against Portugal and then Samoa to stand a chance of joining them.

Why the controversy? Because the referee for the match was Romanian.

I haven’t seen the highlights so I’m only going on what I’ve heard and the fact that the unhappy Spanish team are questioning some of the decisions and actually confronted official, Vlad Iordachescu, at full time. Reports that Vlad scored two of Belgium’s tries are as yet, unsubstantiated.

My favourite bit of the article was the quote from the governing body about the selection of match officials, saying it was made by ‘an independent and neutral skilled committee’ which, with a Romanian referee officiating a match where his country stands to gain from the result, makes this committee sound neither independent, neutral nor least of all, skilled.

The news comes on the back of Cardiff City (It’s OK, we’re back onto football) manager, Neil Warnock, complaining that a ’10-fit-players’ Derby County had deliberately got Sunday’s match called off because they didn’t want to face the in-form Welsh side with an injury hit squad, so even though the car parks and pitch were clear of snow the police advised of a postponement ‘in the interests of spectator safety’. Again, I don’t know if the rumour, that all the overnight snow they cleared off the pitch was dumped on the bridge that leads to Pride Park by Gary Rowett, is just idle gossip; or indeed if the ten fit Derby players really did take turns emptying wheelbarrows of snow into Starbucks’s doorway.

I guess only they know what really happened. But, as Warnock says, who wouldn’t do that in Derby’s positon the way his team are playing?

And these two incidents highlight the spectrum of dubious activity in sport. At one end, there is the legal practices that skirt the boundaries of morality and then there is something far more sinister.

I won’t call it cheating because that’s a very strong word and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt in such murky waters and besides, it’s not easy calling someone you’ve never met a cheat. Apart from Diego Maradona – you huge massive cheat! – and Lance Armstrong and Russian Winter Olympians. And some Summer ones too. And you, Ben Johnson.

Frickin’ big, shameless cheats, the lot of you. Goodness, it’s actually a lot easier than I thought.

But cheating in sport, and football, is a subject that crops up a lot. We come back to it more often than Martin Allen goes back to Barnet, yet we rarely arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

So, what is cheating and what’s not? Which is a legitimate professional foul – perfectly within the rules if not the moral code such as snow in Pride Park’s Starbucks – and which is a full-on Romanian referring debacle? Let’s put this right once and for all.

Diving

Toughie to begin with. At one time, England was the only team in the world that didn’t know how to do it, then – via Michael Owen – we have transformed into, according to Arsene Wenger, the best in the world at it. Now that the new generation of Harry Kane and Dele Alli have taken it to new levels – their club manager learned all he knew from Michael Owen – it’s become a bit divisive. But, there’s a big difference between any kind of touch in the penalty box that makes a player go down a bit too easily and a theatrical swallow dive without being touched. Simulation is never black or white. The grey areas in-between are virtually unfathomable.