Written by SadLad   

….but you would not hold out much hope for 2010 for us all……..

Ponder awhile on these!

1 Article from Charles Mitchell's excellent Independent Athletics Forum in Wales.(www.athleticsresults.co.uk)

Sport is in danger of becoming dull.

Are rules and technology going to ruin sport?

The No False start will for athletics, as audiences will miss seeing a star perform because they twitched. Cricket has decided to overrule the Umpire, but teams only given a few chances to appeal,adding a degree of gamesmanship to the game, which used to be decided by just 2 people, the Umpires on the field. Rugby now has endless appeals about whether a try or not-and they had already 3 men on the field to decide. I cannot recall so many disputed tries before the video ref, same with cricket-the Umpire's decision was final-and worked well.

In athletic's now I am sure we will see challenges over barging , tripping, running out of lane, all scrutunised by the camera- which of course never lies.

Those of an age I am may remember "Blow Up" starring David Hemmings. The camera can lie. A total faith in technology!! - we might as well field robots to compete, or just play the Games out on TV.

Sport is about fractions, every bad decision goes the other way next time - a run of bad luck normally means bad performances by the team concerned.

Sport is about Humans, not technology. So let's remove blocks for the sprinters, dig a hole like we used to do, and just run. When the gun goes off.

Sport for fun.

2 Extract from a letter sent to the Non-League Football Paper by Cyril West of Guildford.

"…….I also doubt the reality of the claimed FA commitment to grass-roots football. They rely on thousands of volunteers like myself to run leagues,then spend a lot of time and money devising mandatory rules that remove completely the known and tested ability of those volunteers to use their local knowledge to run successful leagues."

(Now where have I heard that before! Ed).