Hand of Sod

Ah the immutable laws of football’s professional code. Luis Suarez bats in a goal with his hand like a Dad playing hand tennis with his child (that is NOT a euphemism) and what do the people in football say?

When asked whether Suarez should have owned up, Brendan Rodgers said: "It's not Luis's job to do that. It's not been deliberate as it's pushed up and hit his hand. It's up to the officials to decide that."

When asked whether he felt cheated, Mansfield Town manager Paul Cox said: "No I don't. For me to come out and say something like that I think would be quite cheap.

Matt Holland:  "The answer is not giving individuals morality lessons but giving officials the tools to tackle the problem."

So there we have it. You can't blame Luis if the officials are crap can you? And anyway it was 'instinctive' for him to use his hand illegally. And therefore Luis Suarez was born a cheat.

In other words, there's one rule for footballers and there's another for the rest of us.

I'm not sure the same rules would stand up in a court of law, or even if I was talking to my Dad.

"Why did you steal them sweets, Derek?"
"It was instinct, Dad."
"I think you should go to the police, son."
"Why? It's not my fault they didn't catch me."

Or "excuse me, Mr. Merchant Banker but how come so much of your income remains untaxed?"
"Well don't blame me if no one ever comes a-checking."

Essentially those little lambkins, our tiny ball-hungry (that's not a euphemism) children, doe-eyed and innocent, watch a game of football and learn the first great lesson of modern life: Just get away with what you can. The rules are there to be broken.

It's so embedded in football culture that even opponents patently diddled by such underhand, backhanded or even forehanded skulduggery shrug their shoulders and sigh "That's football."

And there's a bit of me that says well you know what? Fuck football. If it can't be bothered to have some ethics, a bit of morality, a bit of self-respect then what's the point of it?

Paul Cox doesn't want to sound cheap. Well I'll do it for you, Paul. You were fucking robbed, son.

Suarez is a lightning rod for all of this of course. Rodgers has toed the same line as Dalglish. The lad's a wonderfully gifted footballer so we'll gloss over the fact that he hits the deck like a felled tree, leaves his foot in on opponent's ankles, likes to point out racial differences and believes that there are two players on every team who can handle the ball. (Again all of the above are down to instinct, or as some of us say might say, innate evil).

The naysayers insist that if the powers that be won't use technology then it's inevitable that these things will happen. It's not up to the players to do the ref's job for him. Well yes and no.

Two regular offences that blight the game are (a) the diving - and let's not pretend that Gareth Bale British football's Tom Daley right now (the utter sham), and (b) holding and shirt-tugging and all that crap.

Now in the first case I'm all for instant retrospective three-game bans for anyone caught diving, especially if it's an attempt to win a penalty or to get an opponent sent off. In the second case, it's a murky bleeding minefield because it's pretty much obligatory. Referees are being encouraged to deall more severely with it when they spot it but you forget that very often the forward is tugging just as hard on the defender's shirt. It's never that clear-cut.

So there's always going to be areas where a decision is desperately difficult to make, and players are going to do their best to keep exploiting the blurred lines involved.

Patting the ball into the net isn't a questionable decision. The lad knew, just as Maradona and Henry knew, that he's cheated. I don't care what bollocks Rodgers comes out with. Much like any centre-half that comes up against the Uruguayan rodent, he is defending the indefensible.

So yes, use the TV cameras, but no, that doesn't absolve a player from looking to his own morality to judge whether he can live with cheating the opponent and indeed the game itself.

Clearly Suarez has the moral rectitude of one of them ground crickets I saw on David Attenborough's 'Africa' which eat baby birds from out of their nests, and if they fall to the ground and get injured in the process, the other crickets come along and cannibalise it.

Indeed, as one of the ground crickets said. "It's not our fault that the parent birds leave the nest unattended. You've got to take these opportunities when they come. As for the lad that fell on the ground, well you've got to gobble up chances like that haven't you?"

If I'm honest we've all tried to get away with one or two infringements in the past, but these days it's so arrantly embraced and, well, celebrated. It's even more of a shame when the biggest conmen are players like Suarez and Bale who are so outrageously gifted that they need not descend to such depths. It's worse still when the dupes of all this connivance, the officials, are lambasted from pillar to post for missing such things.

And it really is the bottom of the barrel when that apex of the football pyramid, Sir Alex Ferguson, slags every official in sight after they've made a perfectly justifiable decision.

Any road, I'm off to illegally claim that child benefit, dodge some tax and mug a granny. Look it's not my problem there's not enough policemen on the beat. Is it?