Originally Posted by
Badly Ironed Shirt
Not at all, and I've made more views than just the one you've quoted and taken offence at. To elaborate, rugby is a sport with more natural stoppages than football. It is also a sport where refereeing decisions are not held under scrutiny in front of millions of TV viewers every week, and where referees are blamed for teams losing big matches. These last two points are what I think is wrong with football - along with cheating.
The only arguments I have heard for its implementation in football are that it would "stamp out cheating" (no facts to back this up) and it would be interesting.
The referee already has the tools in place to stop dissent. The FA has the tools to punish cheating and diving.
As for Nigel Owens - he has no interest in football. This much is a fact. He's often spoken disparagingly about football and I don't think I've ever seen a comment from him that speaks of football positively. Does that invalidate his opinion? No. Is it the main thrust of our argument? No.
Rugby is a different game, there are more stoppages, there is less feigning of injury, it is more of a contact sport than football (hence feigning injury will get little reward). Losing a player in rugby is a stiffer penalty than in football.
The question is, why aren't refs tougher on players they catch cheating, or showing dissent, or time wasting? Why aren't the football associations tougher when looking at incidents missed by referees? And why do we have supreme confidence that the people who fail to "control" these behaviours with existing tools will get a better result from sin bins? I'd suggest that the use of sin bins would be selective (not applied to goalies, not applied to a player when a team mate is already there).
The refchat site has a forum where actual referees discuss the implementation of this in their leagues.
If I have time later, I will dig out the pages that I was reading.