Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 22:58:55 GMT
If making particular noises are contrary to the Ground rules then the offenders should be thrown out. Just as I imagine in this day and age a spectator who continued swearing loudly, and after being requested by a steward to stop, would also be thrown out.
I've a strong suspicion however that Wildebeeste wanted the players on the pitch to be the ones thrown out, and in this particular case disqualified from the tournament they are competing in.
While I sympathise withe the underlying sentiment, there seems to be a continuing drift towards football being decided off rather than on the pitch.
I dont keep anywhere near as close an eye on lower level local football as do many members of this forum. Unusually for me I read some of the non league news in the Sunday independent a year or so back and was astonished to see that a side was being denied promotion because their kitchen facilities were deemed not to be up to the standard the 'blazers' now insist upon.
Since then I keep more of an eye out for stories such as these and have been shocked by their regularity. Teams battling through a season only for off field matters to eventually decide the promotion and relegation issues, and maybe in future who progresses in the champions league and who doesn't.
Not enough seats, inadequate changing facilities, not enough shower gel provided. It's a trend that seems to be growing and not only in football. Grand Prix racing has reached a point where I pay little store to the person who takes the chequered flag and await the deliberation of the stewards, who seem adept at identifying some infringement or other of their giant rulebook and overturn the result a few hours after the race has finished and announcing a revised finishing order.
At any stage of European competition there are considerable amounts of money involved. In the later stages success or failure will mean tens of millions of pounds at stake. Bearing that in mind, let's suppose the Spurs v Lazio game was the second leg of the Champions League semi final; how easy would it be to pay a few dozen members of London's Italian community to be on stand by ready to racially abuse Spurs players if it looked as if Lazio might be going to triumph ?. I'd go as far as to suggest that you could probably find a reasonable number of London based Roma fans who would even be willing to pay for their own tickets to White Hart Lane if they thought that by making a few monkey chants they could get their arch rivals kicked out of a major tournament.
Then there is the big money involved in betting to consider. It was easy enough to pinpoint who might have been handed a wad of cash to make sure the floodlights mysteriously failed, but it's going to be tougher to work out in a crowd of 35,000 which individuals have been slipped a few hundred quid from that same shady far eastern based betting concern to make the appropriate monkey chants and ensure that the wrong team doesn't progress.
Spurs let the racial abusers into their ground. Spurs leave the offenders stay in the ground and continue that behaviour for the whole of the match, yet when looking round for someone to punish it's decided to pick on the Lazio players who have abused no one. To me it would be like sacking the checkout girl because two shoppers were having a fight in Sainsburys car park.
Alternatively we could just make sure that tickets aren't sold to Members of Football Against Racism in Europe (Fare) as they seem incapable of attending a match without finding something to be offended about.
'Munich' chants will no doubt soon be outlawed, 'Does your boyfriend know you're here' will be classified as homophobic and outlawed, monkey noises outlawed, smoking outlawed, bottle tops outlawed, swearing outlawed, standing in a seated area outlawed. Introduce as as many laws and regulations relating to spectators as Big brother may wish to see in 2012 but keep all that stuff separate and let the football be decided on the pitch.
I've a strong suspicion however that Wildebeeste wanted the players on the pitch to be the ones thrown out, and in this particular case disqualified from the tournament they are competing in.
While I sympathise withe the underlying sentiment, there seems to be a continuing drift towards football being decided off rather than on the pitch.
I dont keep anywhere near as close an eye on lower level local football as do many members of this forum. Unusually for me I read some of the non league news in the Sunday independent a year or so back and was astonished to see that a side was being denied promotion because their kitchen facilities were deemed not to be up to the standard the 'blazers' now insist upon.
Since then I keep more of an eye out for stories such as these and have been shocked by their regularity. Teams battling through a season only for off field matters to eventually decide the promotion and relegation issues, and maybe in future who progresses in the champions league and who doesn't.
Not enough seats, inadequate changing facilities, not enough shower gel provided. It's a trend that seems to be growing and not only in football. Grand Prix racing has reached a point where I pay little store to the person who takes the chequered flag and await the deliberation of the stewards, who seem adept at identifying some infringement or other of their giant rulebook and overturn the result a few hours after the race has finished and announcing a revised finishing order.
At any stage of European competition there are considerable amounts of money involved. In the later stages success or failure will mean tens of millions of pounds at stake. Bearing that in mind, let's suppose the Spurs v Lazio game was the second leg of the Champions League semi final; how easy would it be to pay a few dozen members of London's Italian community to be on stand by ready to racially abuse Spurs players if it looked as if Lazio might be going to triumph ?. I'd go as far as to suggest that you could probably find a reasonable number of London based Roma fans who would even be willing to pay for their own tickets to White Hart Lane if they thought that by making a few monkey chants they could get their arch rivals kicked out of a major tournament.
Then there is the big money involved in betting to consider. It was easy enough to pinpoint who might have been handed a wad of cash to make sure the floodlights mysteriously failed, but it's going to be tougher to work out in a crowd of 35,000 which individuals have been slipped a few hundred quid from that same shady far eastern based betting concern to make the appropriate monkey chants and ensure that the wrong team doesn't progress.
Spurs let the racial abusers into their ground. Spurs leave the offenders stay in the ground and continue that behaviour for the whole of the match, yet when looking round for someone to punish it's decided to pick on the Lazio players who have abused no one. To me it would be like sacking the checkout girl because two shoppers were having a fight in Sainsburys car park.
Alternatively we could just make sure that tickets aren't sold to Members of Football Against Racism in Europe (Fare) as they seem incapable of attending a match without finding something to be offended about.
'Munich' chants will no doubt soon be outlawed, 'Does your boyfriend know you're here' will be classified as homophobic and outlawed, monkey noises outlawed, smoking outlawed, bottle tops outlawed, swearing outlawed, standing in a seated area outlawed. Introduce as as many laws and regulations relating to spectators as Big brother may wish to see in 2012 but keep all that stuff separate and let the football be decided on the pitch.
