I went over to Slightly Dangerous Alan’s house on saturday to check out his new toys. His new hobby. Having grown bored of Counter Cross Stitch and flan-baking, he moved on to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Implements of Death. Nice. As a car dealer he obviously upsets a lot of people. There again, if he was a priest he’d upset a lot of people; its what he does best. So needs protection. And never one to stop short of any kind of excess, this is the result. The really scary thing is that its all legal and available at a ‘good’ sports shop near you. Sadly, no psychological evaluation is required preceding the sale. Otherwise the picture would have been one of me holding a nice cup of tea.

And what’s with all the penalties? Every match seems to be decided on penalties these days, like World Cup quarter-finals. There were 4 penalties awarded at the tragic match on Saturday between Spurs and Man City, 3 of them against Spurs. And in yesterday’s game between Swansea and Stoke there were two more. Screams of ‘unfair’ and ‘cheating’ and ‘diving’ and ‘horrendous refereeing’ ring round the post-match interviews as well as everyone’s favourite: ‘refereeing inconsistency’.

We need the same rules for everyone, said Mark Hughes. Everyone named Ryan Shawcross should be exempt from penalty decisions because the refs are biased against him. Is that, I wonder, because of his reputation, or because he is a bear-hugging thug who hurls people to the floor in temper at every corner kick? Victor Moses dived!!! screamed the Swansea coach. He cheated, dived, won a penalty, the ref should be shot. Blah, blah, blah.

Players cheat. Or perhaps that’s rather indelicate. Maybe ‘attempt to gain an advantage in a not totally honest manner’. Cheating. Diving. Going to ground if any contact is made with the far reaches of their bootlaces. A caress on the shoulder results in any striker plummeting to ground like a dead hippo. Other players kick out, trip up, haul to the ground, headbutt. What is the ref supposed to do?

So the only ‘consistency’ that remains is this:

If its their players doing it (fouling, kicking, diving, ‘simulating’) then they are fucking cheating, scummy, thuggish, diving BASTARDS. If its our players they are the victims of some kind of abuse or tarnished reputation and were innocent of all crimes so the referee made a mistake which cost us the game/goal/league/parking fine.

I hope that’s cleared matters up.

Happy monday

A xxxx