As you may have noticed, I am a huge fan of social media.
I use for everything from promotion and research though to networking and talking bollocks with people I barely know.
Surprisingly, one thing I rarely use social networking for is talking about football. The main reasons being that I don’t really care too much what is happening at any other club than Watford and certainly have little or no interest in the day to day trivia of players lives or for that matter, their opinions. More importantly, I find if far too easy to get sucked into arguments and being the type of person who loves the last word, can find myself involved in pointless debates for days!
In truth, I actually find the whole idea of social networking quite ridiculous and like many things to do with the internet, I consider its prime function is to waste time and avoid facing up to the realities of life. However, it is an undeniable fact that social media does have real power and central to that is the ability to spread or even occasionally, create news. In that sense, Twitter is pretty much unrivalled.
I mention this here because this morning I have been reading the responses to last nights Match of the Day and in particular, the issue of diving which was a key factor in two of the games shown.
To a man, and woman, the response has been one of anger. Not merely at the guilty parties, but at the fact that the pundits on Match of the Day were so loathe to call it what it actually is, cheating. More importantly, there was an inference that the fault lie not with the player, but the referee for missing making the wrong decision.
Now let’s face it, we’ve all seen things happen in games which players have got away with simply because the referee missed them. And even though they will have been picked up by the TV cameras and shown later on, we also know that thanks to the stupid rules relating to retrospective action in regard of cheating, it is extremely unlikely that anything will ever be done by way of punishment.
But like most supporters I am sick to death of the diving and the cheating that is ruining the game I love and if the authorities, the clubs or the players union won’t do anything to stop it even though they know it is wrong, then maybe pressure from the fans will finally force them into action.
Just as importantly, if through the use of social networking fans are finally able to interact more directly with players, maybe they won’t be so quick to feign injury if they know that they are going to have to justify their behaviour to the people who pay their wages. After all, embarrassment is the biggest deterrent known to man!
There will of course be those who think this is the very worst of developments but in all honesty, I don’t care. For too long now we fans have been forced to sit back and put up with the demise of fair play and the shame that this disgraceful cheating brings onto the sport and by association, us.
If through social networking we finally have the chance to force football into bringing about a return to sportsmanship, that can only be a good thing for the game.
So let’s do it.
Finally, a lot of people have been asking about my next movie project and whilst Three Greens continues to head toward production, I can tell you that if all goes to plan, details of another movie I’ve been working on will be released at the Cannes Film Festival next month.
And that’s all you’re getting for now!
Just in case you didn’t already know, all of my books and DVD’s are available from both Amazon and iTunes.
Further information at dougiebrimson.com
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