Retrospective bans for cheating

Ah bless. They're fuming. Yes there was contact. But not where Wright made out there was. The charge is deceiving the referee. Which is exactly what he did. Not much changes with the Johnsons and their teams it seems. Cheats and scumbags.

www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/4835175/bristol-city-bailey-wright-diving-ban-aboubakar-kamara/

Aaah diddums! If you get pushed in the chest don't go down holding your face.

Would have been nice before they scored 3 goals tonight!!

Wasn't Dean Saunders retrospectively "dealt with" after a game against us?  Possibly when he was playing for Villa?  Early 1990's?  An elbow if I recall correctly.

I know quite a few South Americans and many of my Uruguyan and Argentinian friends find the British moralising on diving to be hilarious and hypocritical.  In their football culture 'cunning' is just considered part of the sport.  To deceive the referee to gain an advantage for your team is seen as intelligent and clever play not some violation of the morality of sport or a defection of moral character.  They often criticise those who have been done over by divers for being foolish and naïve to put themselves in that position.  They also point out that the British spent decades illegally kicking star players out of games and the players that did that were often lauded as 'honest' 'tough' etc but if the player being kicked tried to gain an advantage by throwing themselves to the ground to illustrate this to the referee then these would be the players who were labelled 'cheats' not the player who was kicking the 6 shades of s*** out of them all game - many think that is ridiculous.  Argentinians would defend the Hand of God by saying that Terry Butcher spent the whole of the game in 86 trying to injure Maradona and keep him out of the game with persistent foul play (something Bucher has admitted since) with a ref that was turning a blind eye- so they just see it as cunning justice against a team they perceived as utter thugs (hypocritical justification in itself of cause because Argentina were hardly choirboys). I'm not arguing that they are right but there are different perspectives and the idea of sport as some grand morality play is a fairly uniquely British thing in my experience - it seems completely nonsensical and patronisingly superior to many other sporting cultures.

Yes!

Dean Saunders playing for Liverpool at Twerton in the FA Cup 3rd Round, elbowed Jocky in the face when "shielding" the ball. Blatant, deliberate and rightly punished if only retrospectively.

Seem to remember Burrows half murdering Boris on his way to goal and getting away with it that night too.

What an awful side Liverpool were under Souness.

I thought it was Saunders for Villa in the FA Cup replay in January 1993. He certainly elbowed a Rovers player in the face. I remember it well, as I took my fiancée (now wife) to the game, and the incident occurred right in front of us. Since that time, she's always referred to Saunders as "that little thug".

Personally I thought Stuart Campbell was very proficient at game management. Always was able to buy a free-kick when he needed/wanted to slow the game down, which was quite often

It is very much perceived in that way though by many - as snotty and unjustified British superiority.  I still don't think the basic challenge is answered- ie. why were the vast majority of English football fans quite happy to celebrate and mythologise for decades the idea of the hardman as some kind of paragon of hard work, honesty, bravery and it being a man's game despite the many promising careers that were ruined by these people often through extremely cowardly acts yet someone throwing themselves to the ground to gain an advantage is somehow morally defective? That is the issue for me (and, no, not everyone did this and it is completely reasonable to condemn both if you are consistent about it but that attitude is definitely there in the English game).

Rules are rules but they have also been changed, reinterpreted, applied differently etc always (half Nat Lofthouse's goals would have likely been chalked off in the modern era and a player like that is unlikely to have evolved anywhere other than in England at that time - doesn't make him anything less of a legend for that).  I watched a game from Brazil at the weekend - attacking players expect the referee to give them the benefit of the doubt and go down for the slightest touch to very little complaint, the star player particularly expects and receives a very high level of protection in that sense.  In English football the expectation is the opposite, the attacking player is expected to take a physical pounding with very little protection and only go down if the force of the foul is strong enough to knock them down (even if they have clearly been fouled anyway -and refs do rarely give fouls unless it is obvious player has been fouled which normally means they have gone down). It is said to be the main reason Neymar doesn't want to play in the Premier League and turned down Man City.  He doesn't think he will be protected and he doesn't like English fans attitude because he believes we value fouling defenders over skillful forwards.  That is a common view in South America of English football; that the priorities are upside down, that we victimise skilled players protecting themselves and celebrate the 'honest' 'hardworking' 'brave' thuggish player who niggles and hacks all game but not enough to draw attention.  That is not a case of binary hard and fast rules - it is a scale of interpretation.

Me-I like a physical game and I don't like diving (I think the retrospective punishment is a good idea actually) but I see their point of view and I think the idea of sport as a morality play is just absurd and in England has lead to bizarre scenarios in which the 'hard man' who played umpteen games for the club, made a career out of fouling and hacking and broke half a dozen legs is lauded as a cult hero, club legend and an example of good honest hardwork whereas the skilled player who tries to offset that disadvantage by exaggerating contact is always an unconciounable cheat and of questionable moral character.  Whereas in reality these are all professionals trying to make a living out of the game and getting any edge they can which seems reasonable to me within sensible parameters.  That grey area is what makes professional sport interesting, balanced and worth watching - not the pursuit of some unattainable moral purity.