Get Amongst it, Lassie
I quite like this article on stuff about the soccer-girl who yanked down the other player by her ponytail. It's a nice media dissection of the responses.
I tend to agree that it's rather blown out of proportion, when you consider that the male equivalent might be a guy yanking another guy down by his shoulder. That would never make international news. It's just a part of soccer, which is a dirty, dirty game. It was a pretty rubbish thing to do, and it might have hurt a bit, but it was in the heat of the moment and it was done to try to get free, rather than to try and maim her.
I certainly wouldn't want to play against her since she seems to like elbowing people in the kidneys, but the few games of soccer I've watched all looked fairly brutal and it's a game where only the most blatant of fouls seem to get the ref's attention. This culture leads players towards getting away with as much as they can off the ball, or even on the ball. If you wanna make up a little high-light reel of all the times she took out players during the match, then it's more of a criticism of the ref than of her.
I wonder, with our rather 'butch' female culture, if this incident would've been as controversial if it had happened in NZ. I like to think we applaud our female athletes for being rough and tough. I guess we don't support them to the point of unsportsmanlike behaviour, but to be fair only two of the things she did on that clip were grossly beyond fair contention for the ball.
Shh - Maybe Nobody Saw
That leads me to the French saga. As I was saying to Michelle and Sam tonight, I'm not going to criticise the guy who got away with the hand-ball. That kinda thing happens in sport, and if the ref had called it he probably would've nodded and got on with the game.... but sometimes when it doesn't get called, you're kinda taken aback (especially when it's that blatant) and you go with it out of shock. It's the ref's job to call up infringements - there is no onus on players to always be honest (especially at that top level).
Ultimate Frisbee is the only sport where that happens.
Certainly in most sports, if the ref misses something, you're not going to go back and make him change his call. In basketball, if I made a game-winning defensive play, but knew that I'd fouled the player, there's no way I'd say, 'Excuse me ref - but I fouled her, give her some free-throws.' Doesn't work like that. You might just quietly say to the player, 'Tough break - I probably fouled you there,' at the most.
I guess there would be something very noble about having owned up to it, but you can't play 'what-if'. If he'd refused to take the goal, then some die-hard French fan who was pissed off that his country didn't make the World Cup might've fire-bombed his house or something. You can't please everybody, and you've only got a few seconds in which to make that judgement call.
I guess that's one of the nice things about cricket, the expectation of honesty when the ref messes up a call. It's quite a unique and gentlemanly honour-code. It would be a real test of character to see if a batsman would own up knicking the ball in an equivalent situation - say, the final over of a World Cup final, where his team had no wickets left and needed a few runs to win it.
But soccer sure ain't cricket. Apples and oranges.
5 comments:
Sammy's easy guide to whether a batsman nicked a ball: If he looks to see if anyone caught it, he nicked it. This is especially true of caught-behind occasions. I've never seen a batsman caught behind who didn't look back at the wicketkeeper first.
I think the honesty code in cricket (as well as Football's 'beautiful game' tag) is a bit of a myth. I've seen plenty of international players not walk when they knew they were out (and a rare few that do). Soccer for me is blighted by the rampant cheating and childish attempts to milk penalties. This was evident even in our sanctified All Whites v Bahrain match from both sides. I frequently found myself yelling 'get up you pansy!' at the screen, and found it remarkably convenient that one of our players needed to be stretchered off the ground in the dying minutes of the game (thus disrupting the oppositions flow on attack).
As someone who played the game once upon a time (and commented on the stuff thread you linked), I agree that the furore surrounding Ms Lambert is overblown, and that both her and Henry's hand of frog represent refereeing failures as much as anything else. I'm disappointed though that a sexism argument has been introduced by some to justify Lambert's behaviour. I disagree about your fair contention comment. The plays I saw may have started out fair, but certainly didn't end that way.
Well, maybe not 'fair'... she might've deserved a yellow card or something.... but she was at least going for the ball, and from my ignorant perspective, it seems tackles quiet often turn dangerous, so those other moments of themselves wouldn't cause any kind of media attention. Whereas the other two were off the ball bar-room brawl type moves.
And I am not really in favour of pieces like this being 'news'.... they fit into the whole degeneration of 'journalism' into writing opinion pieces about you-tube clips and pretending it's 'news'.... but I liked how it discussed media coverage and tried to analyse why it had become a sensation and what core issues that tied into. It suits my Media Studies slant (ie - I could use that article in a class, and may well do so next year). And I'm cautious about respecting articles that use blogs as reliable sources.
it's football...and they don't walk in cricket anymore...and there was way too much diving in the bahrain game...get up you great nancy (thanks the goodies) was yelled many times at the screen
Actually having just had another look at the video, I'd say that none of the challenges shown are legit, as they are either openly dangerous or technically illegal within the rules. Again, poor refereeing.
Also worth noting that the camera was already focussed in in place for the hair pull, implying there might have been a whole lot of stuff going on off camera before a director noticed. Also noted it was more than one player on the red team playing outside the rules.
Just for completeness' sake we also don't know what if any provovation was offered by white. Some niggle is evident from white, but it is pretty minor stuff, and not warranting the dispoportionate response meted out.
I suspect the white players were niggling in response to what she'd been doing all game, rather than initiating it. Much like you shoving that girl back tonight after she'd leaned on you lots of times :)
Or maaaybe they'd played her team before and knew if they started a bit of argie-bargie that this player was likely to blow her top and get red-carded. That'd be a smart tactic.
It's quite a scary thing that these days you can't do something a little underhanded in sports without the prospect of it being taped and put on international websites.... that's a bit rough! What happens on the field should stay on the field ;)
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