Tom Daley wannabe

It's not about how big you are, it's about how big you are compared to everyone else.

Footballers tend to be larger. At 6' 5" Mina dwarfs GD, for example.

All* top level footballers are in excellent physical condition, so if another player is bigger than you...

*Except Deeney, obviously.

 

The thing about retrospective bans and yellow cards is that they involve deferred punishment. For greater effectiveness and greater justice, punishment should be immediate.

 

Yeah, of course, that's fine, I just don't think they can really qualify as 'small, slight' footballers, and aren't really smaller than most players they play against. Like the majority of attackers they're smaller than the hulking centre backs they're usually varyingly up against, but that's more par for the course than anything else and true of every team's attackers.

 

Of course. It was just easier to list two examples than list every player on every team who is on the smaller side of the scale. It's certainly not exclusive to them.

 

Fairplay.

 

The girls were absolutely hammered yesterday by a very good Dutch side 0-8. Focussing on the umpires and VAR: the Dutch were very physical earning a green (2 mins) for a series of challenges. The BBC played quite a bit of the umpires' feed (there's two on the pitch) during the match where there was quite a bit of chatter between them about keeping an eye on certain Dutch players. England used their VAR appeal twice - once in a very early bit of the game (over-turning a penalty corner decision for the Dutch) and the other was a fit of petulance in 3Q during a goal-mouth scramble for nothing so they lost further appeals. Incidently, when the first umpire was asked for an appeal the first thing she said was to the other umpire was whether she saw something before going to VAR.

The men are playing today at 12h30 (against the 'Sweaty Socks') and as you would imagine that any meeting between these two sides will be, ahem, played in a spirit of friendship and sportsmanship that all sporting meetings between these countries always produce. Both teams need at least a draw to guarantee avoiding relegation to the 2nd tier of the European competition so it should be a tough match.

Coverage is on the beeb's red button (and via the BBC sports app) and I strongly suggest everyone to have a look to see how a 3 card penalty and VAR appeal system works in a fast-paced ball game similar to footy. I'm also a big fan of two umpires on the pitch.