Time wasting is getting worse at football games it seems.Why can't football do what rugby and other sports do.When there is a stoppage due to an injury of for substitutions to be made the rugby referee calls time off,and when play can resume calls time on.This surely would stop all these time wasting tactics at a stroke.
My other spectator sport is ice hockey,which consists of three twenty minute periods in which the spectator gets sixty minutes of play as the clock stops when play is stopped and starts again when play restarts.This maybe too much for football to change to,but a few years ago i put a stop watch on the first half of a city game stopping time when the ball was not in play and starting again when play resumed.This was just an experiment to see the time the ball was actually in play.When the referee blew for half-time,my watch was saying 21 minutes only when the ball was in play!! Food for thought.