And how could I miss this: that game was a vital one during the European Championships. England needed to win it to progress to the semi-finals. But of course Linekar didn’t give a stuff about the result :rolleyes:
Wouldn’t even have been his last game had Smith managed to score, now would it?
Anyway, it’s still beside the point. The hold-up caused by Drummond’s actions didn’t upset me one microcosm of a point of a percent as much as the judge’s decision in the first place. So who should I be upset at?
To clarify (again) I can sympathise with the guy’s absolute disbelief and horror at an unfair ruling but what did he think he could achieve by playing up? I’ll tell you, he thought he had the might to overturn a decision that was made by the ruling body for the sport. What’s more, he thought he could coerce others to support him on this. He couldn’t.
That’s as may be, but I simply don’t think the comparison has any merit whatsoever. Here’s just one of my objections: when a player is sent or brought off his team carries on. Regardless of the import of playing in the match to the player in question, the situation is still fundamentally different due to this objection.
That’s the problem with analogies – you end up debating the validity of the analogy rather than the issue. Football isn’t athletics. The European or World Cups are not the IAAF World Championships. Talk of Beckham and Linekar is a distraction. The situation is simple enough to deal with directly.
Actually, I don’t think he was particularly thinking anything other than how horrendously unfair the whole situation was. He had a reaction to that injustice. The reaction was unfortunate alright, but I can hardly condemn him any more than I can condemn the man that punches his desk when he finds that he’s been burgled. I prefer to focus on the true offender.
I dont think he was trying to bully a decision, and I dont think he had an inlfated sense of his own power by believeing he could overturn the officals’ beliefs. He was pissed off, upset and desperate for people to see his point.
When he was told of the false start, he got upset and he didnt believe it. But he complied with the officials until they all went to look at the restart by the trackside monitor. When Drummond saw he didnt move off the blocks, all the fatass officals did was the point at the monitor, say nothing, and just look away. That’s when the fireworks really started. It was literally like talking to a brick wall.
To Drummond it looked like they werent listening to him. Just pointing at the monitor and looking away - how fuppin ifuriating is that?? They were all looking at the same pictures and seeing different things, but none of the trackside officials seemed to want enter into dialogue about it. So its not surprising he went ballistic. Pointing to a machine and looking away appeases no-one
Again, maybe you’re right but it DOES have an affect because it was broadcast around the world.
And, like you just said, I don’t think that analogy does justice to this situation.
Like I say, I think we are in agreement on this to a large extent…I just don’t think there is any room (in any walk of life to be honest) for people to think they are above the rules that govern everyone else.
As a bit of context, I am a football referee. I see both sides of this type of thing all the time (albeit on not quite the international stage ) because, as a ref (or assistant), I don’t always make the right decisions. However, FA penalties for players that respond inappropriately are much tougher than those for the original offence and there’s an obvious reason for this. The theory is that the original decision that I, or my colleagues, make is an honest one. It damages the game, the team and the sport as a whole if the rules and/or governance are put under threat. As I see it, the higher the sport goes, it becomes more and more important that those involved present a good image and maintain the value of the game. As soon as people think they are above this, and can control it from within, then something is lost.
I didn’t see this bit, so I can’t really comment apart from to say that that official was obviously an ass and the governing body obviously hadn’t trained their staff to deal with such situations.
The rule does seem to be unfair as it almost incentivises attampts to jump the gun at the first start. If you don’t disadvantage yourself vis-a-vis the other athletes, you might as well give it a go. Having said that, the interminable number of false starts in sprints were, as utkik says, disrupting TV coverage and I would argue, making the sport less attractive. A better solution would have been to just disqualify athletes for any false start, without allowing the first athlete get away with it.
My understanding is that a false start does not require you to break the plane of the line or lift your hands. Excessive movement or twitching have always been false starts because they can set off other athletes. I don’t have a cite (far too lazy) but I thought a false start happened when a pressure greater than the prescribed tolerance is placed on the blocks. Drummond clearly moved his foot and set the blocks off - seems fair enough to me.
All this is largely immaterial though. The fact is that Drummond acted disgracefully. He had been disqualified and was never going to be reinstated on the night. He got no support from coaches and athletes and his largely successful attempts to stoke up the crowd only made matters worse. Even if it was a bad rule, even if he thought he hadn’t false started, he must have had the basic cop-on to understand that his antics weren’t going to lead to him being allowed to run. Given the performances of the other Americans, it probably didn’t make any difference anyway.
I dont think people should believe they’re above the rules either, cos that’s just plain stoopid. However, I do think that rules which are plainly stupid, not workable and completely ambiguous should be wiped.
The problem is ‘dialogue’ gets nowhere when an organisation such as the IAAF cloaks itself in words and counter accusations.
The false start rule has pissed of 95% of sprinters in the last couple of years - unfair dismissals, records harder to beat due to tentativeness… People have been complaining for ages and it was ignored cos the networks were putting on pressure for their schedules, and networks = money.
So sometimes you need something like this to be a catlayst. People get talking about (e.g. us) and start paying attention to it.
In Drummond’s case, in the heat of the moment, he was demanding to still run the race as a protest not as a competitor. He was acting like a sulky child, but perhaps he want to bring as much exposure to this idiocy as possible.
Exposure for himself, maybe, but exposure to a crap ruling, definitely
Yes, I almost added this earlier. There was a debate on Radio5 when I was coming to work this morning about the increased use of technology in sport and I thought then that, at least to an extent, at least it has encouraged discussion of an important general issue.
My own feeling on this one, slightly off the point I guess, is that it would have been worse if it was a human decision rather than a technological one. At least there was some evidence (albeit perhaps not infallible).
Do (professional) football referees rely on the good conduct of players as regards leaving the field? Or do they have some back-up stewards ready to escort a player if they want to make a scene?
You can’t be surprised at what someone does when they’re upset but you can make sure that you have the system in place to deal with it. The officials on the day were simply hopeless. Firstly, as per utkik, they infuriated the situation with their antics. And then they just acted like a bunch of headless chickens.
Drummond will be the fall guy because they were made to look stupid. If they’d had a system to escort him off then they could have fined him and been done with it. Now they have to try to flex their muscles because they were shown up.
Not to mention the fact that Drummond was on his way off the track after about 10-15 minutes but was advised to go back again. How do you factor that into the situation?
Professional referees only exist at the top of the sport (premiership and UEFA, FIFA). Obviously at those kind of venues there is support should it be needed. It isn’t. For all levels of play The Laws of the Game state that should a player refuse to leave the field of play the game is abandoned. In such an eventuality the FA makes sure that the penalties for CLUBS, not only players, are so severe that the consequences are not worth it. As such, a not atypical scene will have a player remonstrating with the ref after a sending off and his team-mates and coaching staff coming on to lead him off the field. They are supporting the Laws of the Game despite usually disagreeing with the decision.
I think you are right about the officials on the day handling it badly. It’s probably because they did not conceive that anybody would react like that. Not an excuse as they obviously should have contingency.
Here’s a solution! Albeit a slightly crazy one… every runner in a sprint race should have a locked tether strapped to their mid-riff and the tether is then locked to a computer driven device behind the runner - say about 3 feet away.
Each runner would then be able to assume their starting position and on the call of ready then assume a strained position against the tether. When the gun fires the tether could be released and every runner in the field would burst out of the blocks at exactly the same time. In the rare event that a runner’s tether failed to release, a restart could be held.
I know it sounds fanciful, but lovers of cycling will be familiar with the bike locking device which cyclists use on the velodrome at the start of time trials and persuits. I’m thinking of a similar concept here, if you will.
FWIW, I meant referees of the professional game, not professional referees – “professional football” referees, as t’were, and not professional “football referees”.
I know that y’all are in the midst of a heavy discussion about the rules and such, but I finally saw clips of Drummond’s shenanigans last night when we watched a replay of some of the day’s events.
I would like to apologize to the world for ALL of the American sprinters. There seems to be a bit of an attitude coming off of many of the athletes (particularly the Americans, though it’s not limited to them).
I saw an athlete win a race (women’s race, though I forget which one, was reading a magazine AND watching TV) finishing just ahead of a fellow countrywoman. The commentator asked her if she was worried at all that her teammate might beat her. Her response was something akin to “that would have been okay, because it’s my job to motivate my fellow teammates”. I would be very surprised to ever hear that kind of statement from a US athlete.
If I may rant about that new rule, however. It’s NOT helping TV coverage. We’re now spending 5 minutes watching runners hop in and out of the blocks. Why does that piss me off? Because then we only get to see one friggin’ lap of the 10,000 meter races! :: rassinfrassin US coverage of track & field ::
) because, as a ref (or assistant), I don’t always make the right decisions. However, FA penalties for players that respond inappropriately are much tougher than those for the original offence and there’s an obvious reason for this. The theory is that the original decision that I, or my colleagues, make is an honest one. It damages the game, the team and the sport as a whole if the rules and/or governance are put under threat. As I see it, the higher the sport goes, it becomes more and more important that those involved present a good image and maintain the value of the game. As soon as people think they are above this, and can control it from within, then something is lost.