Let's Get Technical

NEARLY 30 years ago, with snow blanketing the country and all seven local junior football teams, plus the local rugby club idle, I had to somehow, fill four blank pages of sport for my local paper.

OK, nice big pictures of kids playing on snow-covered football pitches filled some space; a look forward to hoped for action at the weekend, plus weather forecasting and injury bulletins did for more column inches; a bigger than usual fixture list plus league tables helped. But, I still had a full page to fill.

Then, I remembered the local basketball club had a Sunday game; so, I went along, wrote it up and gave them more publicity than they had ever had. This got me into basketball, a game which I had previously not rated too-highly.

With regard to the present little local difficulties with referees in football, basketball has a couple of features which just might help-out the Beautiful Game. The first of these is the Personal Foul, the second is the Technical Foul.

The Personal Foul does what it says on the tin - each player is held responsible for every foul he commits, and after his fifth foul, he is out of the game. Such a rule in football would soon get rid of our "hammer throwers". Ross Tokeley for instance would only have to play about half an hour per match.

But the real beauty is the Technical Foul. "Techies" as they are known can be awarded for just about anything the referees consider to be against the spirit of the game: bad language, extreme dissent, any kind of misbehaviour. They are usually awarded against coaches, indeed, some coaches deliberately take Techies if they feel the referee is agin them.

The Techie is called and the opposition are given either one or two free throws - basketball's equivalent of the penalty kick, with, sometimes, if the Techie was a particularly bad one, possession given to the opposition from the restart. This is of course a big advantage in a game where possession is so crucial.

Now, imagine this in football. A manager is giving the referee all sorts of abuse from the bench. The referee goes over, indicates he has incurred a technical foul and awards the opposition a penalty kick.

I don't think it would take too-long for even the most-obnoxious, ginger-headed of managers to realise, he'd better stop having a go at the referee, or it is going to be extremely costly to his side.

And while we're importing sanctions from other games - what about a rugby-style citing officer, to look at footage of a game, after it has ended, and adjudicating on fouls or foul play which the referee might have missed? This too could clean up a lot of the nefarious paractices which besmirch the beautiful game.

Also, let's bring-in the sin bin, from ice hockey and rugby, so that any player receiving a yellow card has to spend ten minutes sitting out the action. Other rugby practices worth importing include the ten metres sanction for not immediately retreating to allow a free kick to be taken (if the offending side don't immediately get back - the kick position is advanced ten metres) and the practice of calling-up the captain so that he hears why his team mate is being yellow-carded and sin-binned.

I've said before and I will say again doubtless, football needs a spell of zero tolerance and these imports from other sports will surely help clean it up.

It's worth a try I feel.