george long

[GRUMPY BLADE]

Whether or not, you agree it was a penalty or not, a red card etc, the rule (law 12) under its current intepretation is ridiculous.

I think many of us will remember Willie Young hacking down Paul Allen in the 1980 Cup final, the incident which proved to be the catalyst for the introduction of the so called professional foul a couple of years later.

Originally, the ruling was that a player had to be making a deliberate attempt to deny a goal scoring opportunity. (ala Willie Young). I don't think anyone had an issue with that.

Yesterday, Long clearly had only genuine intent to get the ball and not the player, he didn't raise his leg to trip him and at no point made any attempt to deliberately foul the opponent. If Rodallega had rounded Longy and he had rugby tackled him that would have been different.

Unfortunately, Fifa changed the ruling in 1998, and omitted the 'deliberate' from the Law.

Therefore under today's ruling it doesn't matter if it was deliberate or not,..... which to me goes totally against the spirit of the game, and what they originally set out to do, which was basically, to stop players from cheating.

Didn't one ref introduce 'intent' off his own back?

 

[sheffielder]

Yep a big example in the first half of how we were wasting possession. Not sure what Doyle was thinking with that ball!

Credit to him though for getting back in and helping to almost get George long sent off by smashing into the Fulham striker after long slid into his legs!

You can't teach this type of magic.

 

[SandyMcBlade]

I thought they were just a lot better at fouling than us, take the kick from behind by Rodallega that put Maguire out,never even got a mention...