Blog: Diving, cheating and suspensions

Unfortunately the 'Cheats never prosper' mantra, didn't quite win through. Dartford taking the three points by fair means or foul.

From early doors, the Darts' side set about a typical tactic aimed at unsettling the Bucks' midfield. With one target in particular the focus of their crusade: Godfrey Poku.

For the main, their prime target conducted himself without any issue and perhaps with a little more protection from the referee, Colin Lymer – the red card he ended up receiving wouldn't have arrived. Granted, it has since been rescinded, with the FA feeling there was no case for Poku to answer, but the point still stands, that we had to see out the final thirty minutes of the game with a one man disadvantage by what at best can be called cheating.

We could have ended up losing Godfrey Poku for five – or even more games – as a result of this dismissal. The fact that he has been remarkably improved in terms of discipline since his acrimonious beginning had the potential to be washed away in the time it took the referee to flourish the red card.

You see, that's how quickly times can change in football. Footballers live on a knife edge and can find themselves going from hero to zero in the blink of an eye.

Now that I have set the scene with a recent and topical event that Bucks' fans are familiar with – I feel this leads on to an interesting debate – and that is of the instant review of decisions, the replaying of games following a successful appeal, or the reversal of punishments placed upon someone found guilty of cheating/ simulation.

There are pros and cons for each of these solutions. But the first point that needs to be raised is: Would the result of the game have been the same, if the side that was incorrectly 'wronged' hadn't have been?

They could have got a draw, they could have won the game… they might still have lost the match. There is no way of telling, due to the unpredictable nature of the game. If the game was played three times with Telford down to ten men, there could easily have been three different results.

Yes, the subsequent five match ban has now been removed, but surely through instant reviews of decisions Dartford would not have had an unfair advantage in what was billed by many as a crunch six pointer. Without the benefit of instant decisions, they knew that they could apply pressure to a potentially weak referee, to gain an unfair advantage, which they could potentially take advantage of.

Instant reviews could be seen to be detrimental to the game as it may potentially make the game longer whilst decisions are reviewed and tensions may become fraught during the decision making process. In rugby it only takes a matter of minutes to review decisions though – and the respect is there for the officials making these calls. Perhaps to limit the time taken teams can be limited to the number of decisions they wish to review in a game. But then you have to ask on what basis are these decisions reviewed instantly?

Could this be fed down to grass roots football easily enough?

This leads on to the potential of replaying games where an incorrect decision has been proven. With extra travel and expenses to be incurred by teams, this may be something that stops this in its' tracks. However I can see why the clamor for something like this to happen raises its' head when a team is wronged… perhaps there are exceptional circumstances when this would be suitable, but then you need to consider fairness of this to other teams within the league and gains that could be gotten through this approach.

The third suggestion – the reversal of suspensions. If a player is found guilty of getting another player deliberately sent off, and therefore seeking to gain his team an unfair advantage – then would imposing the said suspension on that player not have its' merits. Would Lee Noble have been quite so quick to get Godfrey Poku sent off, knowing that his actions could land him a five match ban? Quite possibly not. But then, who knows?

Whatever happens at the end of the day, something needs to be done to stop our beautiful game being spoilt. Yes decisions are topics of debate up and down the country and form part of what we know and love, but with football becoming increasingly big Bucks, the price to pay for errors, cheating and wrong-doings is so great, players are willing to do all they can to win –

And that's not beautiful, just simply put – an ugly mess.