STEPHEN McGOWAN:
FOOTBALL is riven with incoherent double speak. Meaningless cliches routinely spouted by panellists and ex-pros to exonerate cheating.
‘He gave the referee a decision to make’ is a favourite.
A fork-tongued explanation for fouls and penalties being given when they shouldn’t be, it is especially popular amongst the ex-pro analysts and fans attempting to excuse the inexcusable.
But now comes a rival. A new entry to the David Brent book of original thought.
Jamie Walker of Hearts did not throw himself to the ground under little or no duress from Celtic’s Kieran Tierney in last weekend’s league match at Tynecastle.
His only crime, it seems, was to ‘anticipate the contact’. But what does this actually mean?
When an opponent slides in to win the ball, the normal reaction should be to contest it. It is not normal to go down screaming before the contact comes.
Yet amongst Scotland’s former pros there is a curious reluctance to call simulation what it is.
Celtic skipper Scott Brown was forthright in condemning Walker. The midfielder called his Hearts opponent a ‘diver’ and a ‘cheat’.
There is an unspoken code amongst ex-footballers that publicly querying the integrity of fellow professionals is bad form.
Last year, Ronny Deila was forced to defend Brown against accusations of diving in a game at Inverness.
So last weekend’s Brown outburst raised accusations of double standards. Hearts were unimpressed. To be clear, the Edinburgh club had grounds to be angry over the SFA handing down a two-match ban to Walker.
Had the player been booked at the time, he would have landed nothing worse than a yellow card. That cannot be right.
Two seasons ago, the SFA compliance officer let Celtic’s John Guidetti off with conning the referee to win a penalty after he went down at Tynecastle.
Hearts ask why Walker’s case should be seen in a different light and they have a point. They are on shakier ground when they claim there was contact between Tierney and Walker. That doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
It is impossible to prove Walker acted with intent to deceive referee John Beaton. But the SFA operate on the balance of probabilities.
And repeated viewings of the video evidence from last Sunday lead most observers to conclude Walker conned the officials.
Yet, amongst professional footballers, past and present, there is a growing suggestion that simulation is part and parcel of football. Placed in Walker’s position, some are blunt. They would do the same. A posse of pros and ex-pros more or less said so on BBC Radio Scotland’s Sportsound on Wednesday night. Mark Burchill, Allan Preston and Ryan Stevenson are perfectly sound blokes with good reputations.
Stevenson admitted simulation was ‘morally wrong.’ But that, under certain circumstances, it’s unavoidable. The others all but branded diving ‘one of those things’.
Sky’s Andy Walker is refreshingly honest on this subject. The former Celtic striker upsets people when he equates simulation with ‘being clever.’ When money is involved, he claims, bad things happen. People are brazen. Instance the scandal of MPs’ expenses.
Footballers have bonuses, wages and trophies to win. They will do whatever it takes to win a penalty or a throw-in.
British football likes to hide behind a mask of moral superiority. We kid ourselves it is a foreign disease.
Yet the last time anyone checked, Jamie Walker, Peter Pawlett and Brian Graham all held UK passports. And all three have now been suspended by the SFA for acts of simulation.
Let’s stop pretending diving is something ‘Johnny Foreigner’ does to pollute our game.
The Jamie Walker case tells us this. In Scottish football, simulation has now become a legitimate tactic of war.