I have never been a great fan of
Manchester United's Gary Neville, who seems to me to have an
unwarranted degree of self importance. In the Manchester
United game against Middlesborough, he was very lucky to be
headed off by other players from physically attacking the
referee.
The cause of his anger was the sending
off of one of the newer United Players, Darren Fletcher, after
he received a second caution. I am sure Neville was pleased to
see that there was sympathy, not with his behaviour but with
his feelings, not only by his boss Sir Alex Ferguson, but also
by the Premiership television pundits that night and
newspapers the following day.
The two cautions were perhaps good
examples of how many people don't understand why one foul
warrants a caution and yet another, seemingly similar,
doesn't. The television pundits on the Premiership called his
first yellow card, a 'soft caution'. The report I read in the
newspaper the following day said it was an 'innocuous tug'.
Football reporters seem to love the word innocuous. I remember
one complaining that a referee had given a penalty because a
defender had 'innocuously' pulled the shirt of an opponent. A
shirt pull is still holding, however you wrap it up.
In Fletcher's case, he just held on to
an opponent for a few
seconds as he went to go by him. If the player had gone clear
he would have been able to set up an attack on the United
goal. Anywhere else on the field and Fletcher would probably
have just been penalised for holding. But it was a spoiling
tactic designed to break up the attack and Fletcher would have
been quite happy to concede the free kick. Innocuous it might
have been but the referee decided that the intent and result
were unsporting behaviour and therefore cautionable.
Fletcher's second caution was a little
different. He tackled an opponent in the middle of the field
and followed through, bringing him down. We see many
players brought down as a result of a tackle, so what turns it
into a cautionable offence.?
There are three reasons. The first one
is the same as Fletcher's first caution. It's when the tackle
is made to prevent the development of an attack: rather than
just a careless or mistimed tackle. The second is the
intimidatory tackle and these things are often planned. I had
a friend who used to play for the old Reading A team. Fast
winger with a good shot, but defenders knew if they hit him
early on he wouldn't run at them for the rest of the game.
Something that has probably been going on as long as football,
but it is unsporting behaviour
and therefore cautionable.
The third reason a tackle attracts a
caution is when it is considered by the referee to be
reckless. Football is still a contact sport, it is a combative
sport and accidents will happen but the laws expect the
contest to gain possession of the ball to be fair and safe. A
reckless tackle is one which may endanger the safety of the
opponent: one where the player has taken a reckless attitude
to his opponent's safety.
An example may be a sliding tackle.
Sliding tackles can be performed perfectly legally but
sometimes the player has no control over the tackle and this
creates an element of danger to his opponent. A reckless
tackle
isn't one where a player sets out to hurt or injure his
opponent, that would be a sending off offence, it's one where
he doesn't take enough care, or he doesn't
care enough.
The newspaper report I read said that
Fletcher's were 'two soft cautions' and his tackle was clumsy
but hardly dangerous. For referee Messias, I think the
follow through, took it from clumsy to reckless.