Deck of Cards

I HAVE, for some time, been meaning to pen a dissertation on discipline within football. I'm on fairly safe ground here, since there is no evident appetite within the game's corridors of power to do anything to discipline the weans who play it and the even-bigger weans who coach or manage.

After all, here is a game which, from right at the top: Blatter, Warner & Co, to the very bottom - the local Sunday pub league, the only rule is that there are few rules and those we have are there to be bent, twisted or simply ignored. The only rule which I see regularly adhered to is rule one in the Auchinleck version, as used in that charming Ayrshire spa town: "Nae bluid - nae foul".

I yearn for the day when the four Home Nations bite the bullet and decide to re-assert the United Kingdom's traditional role as the conscience of the game, by going into the annual IFAB junket with a common purpose, to clean-up the playing side of the game. I specify the playing side of the game, Hercules himself would struggle to cleanse football's Augean Stables of politics: FIFA, UEFA etc., right down to the FA, the English Premiership or the alleged Masonic conspiracy which is the SFA.

To clean-up the playing side, the law makers might like to have a look at how they do it in other sports, so here are a few ideas to consider.

In (field) hockey, umpires have three cards: green, yellow and red. The green card comes out for minor infringements, the yellow for more-serious and the red, as ever, means: "you're aff son"; two greens equal one yellow, which brings a minimum five minutes in the sin bin, while, as in football, two yellows equals one red.

Then, in basketball there is the personal foul, whereby each individual player is responsible for his own fouls, five fouls and you are out of the game, but can be substituted, while the number of team fouls is totted-up and after a certain number, every defensive foul thereafter - no matter where on the court it is committed - incurs a free throw, basketball's equivalent of the penalty kick.

Rugby has something which has long been advocated for football - the ten metres advance. With this, if you give away a penalty and either: do not immediately retreat ten metres, attempt to hold-up the penalty, tell the refereee you disagree, then he can advance the kick ten metres towards your goal. This has occasionally turned an unkickable penalty into a kickable one and I well-remember, some 40 years ago, watching a future leading Scottish administrator refuse to stop moaning at a referee, who advanced the penalty 40 metres, finally the dissent stopped, the penalty was kicked and the game consequently lost.

Said future administrator was, in that one incident, converted to a firm belief in no dissent.

Hockey and rugby both have sin bins for yellow cards and significantly in top-class rugby, any team going down to 14 men for ten minutes can expect to ship 17 points in that period.

The sin bin, of course, began in ice hockey. Now this sport has a reputation for rough and ready fighting, but, at its best is a fast, furious, spectacular game. To help keep it this way, there are some overlooked rules which might benefit football.

There is "icing", when a team simply lumps the puck up the ice to kill time, only to see it brought back for a face-off close to their goal.

Then there is a "delaying the game" call, when perhaps a goal tender deliberately knocks the puck out of the rink.

Ice hockey also differentiates between minor and major offences, while referees can decide that a foul has been deliberate and punish accordingly.

Now, imagine if football was to adapt some of these laws into the game. A mis-timed tackle, might bring a "cool it" lecture from the referee; a second might bring a green card, while a third would bring a yellow and a five minute spell in the sin bin. A third green could then follow - perhaps for another mis-timed challenge, before another yellow would see the miscreant going off. Of course a second yellow would still be available for major rather than minor fouls.

On the fifth foul, the player would automatically be off, but could be replaced.

The team fouls count might just be the best way of cleaning up the game. If the stupid "forward's tackle" which we see so-often in the middle of the park, could lead to conceding a penalty, once the team had gone over the threshold of team fouls, players just might cut them out.

The ten metre advance has been advocated for so long, everyone must be aware of it. I believe, after a team had conceded even one match-losing penalty, by having free kicks advanced into the box and converted to a the spot kick, the unseemly arguing and not retreating we see so often, would cease.

But, I have left my most-controversial idea to borrow from another game until last. In basketball they call it a technical foul, in ice hockey it is a bench penalty; this is a penalty called against a nippy coach, who repeatedly misbehaves on the side lines. If introduced into Scotland this would quickly become known as "Lenny's Law". Can anyone think who Lenny might be?

Basketball technical fouls can also be awarded against players: "Scott's Law or "Diouf's Discretion" anyone?

Football is indeed 'the Beautiful Game', but its fair visage is these days increasingly pock-marked by spiteful, petty fouling, by a lack of fair play - the men who run the game MUST, for the good of the game, sort this out.

Is the will to do this there?

No, I don't think so either - but we have to keep pressing for it.