What the 'ell do you want?
By Jack Leahy –
Open up a tabloid newspaper and on any given day and you will find headlines relating to excess alcohol consumption, sexual misdemeanors and financial greed. Much of the time, these headlines are all about Premier League football players.
Yesterday, the FA ruled against Wayne Rooney’s appeal against a two-match ban for swearing into a television camera having completed his hat-trick in last weekend’s clash with West Ham.
While the easier option is of course to stick to our much-fired moral guns and criticise Rooney for his behaviour, it must be asked – is cursing into a television camera really that bad? As suggested in the opening paragraph, it’s not the worst thing a professional football player – or, to digress, Rooney himself – has done by any stretch of the imagination.
The stock answer is of course yes and insert ensuing moral rant about Rooney’s iconic status among children here. While, all things considered, I would most likely back a reprimand in some way shape or form, I do believe there is a case to be made for leniency.
Let’s have a look at it.
The first question raised is, as Rio Ferdinand tweeted on Saturday evening with many more grammatical errors, when did football grounds become swear-free zones? ‘I don’t want to bring my child into that environment’, I hear you say. Well, the sad truth is you already do.
Listen to the Manchester United players as they celebrate any one of their four goals last Saturday and you will hear cursing. Listen to any player on the wrong end of a crunchinhg tackle and you will hear cursing. Listen to any partisan in the crowd and you will hear things about the referee’s wife you hope your children never come within a three-mile radius of hearing. What happened on Saturday is by no means abhorrent to the modern football follower.
Just before the weekend’s fixtures, the FA announced a new ‘Respect’ code for players, and while I think it is undoubtedly a move in the right direction, you have to wonder whether or not that overly influenced their decision to uphold Rooney’s two-game ban.
I would hope that, seeing as Rooney will now definitely incur the two-game suspension, the authorities are quick to clamp down on diving too. If you’re going to exhort me to think of the children, I for one would much rather my child was a foul-mouth as long as he or she was foul-mouthed but too upright to be dishonest. I am yet to hear an explanation which stands on its own feet as to why diving is punishable only by a yellow card whereas cursing earns suspension.
‘But the problem wasn’t that he cursed, it was that he did so into the television camera’, I hear you say in rebuttal. Well, for one thing, why was the cameraman so close to Rooney in the first place? Imagine this for a moment: every single aspect of your life is documented on camera. You can’t put out the bins, walk the dog, or order a Chinese without photographic evidence being taken by the 24-hour gaggle of paparazzi who hound your door.
You might say that this is the cost of a life in professional football in England, a job for which Rooney is infamously well-compensated, but for me that argument has never held. Millionaire or peasant, everyone deserves the right to privacy and while this isn’t an issue on the pitch, if you were stalked aggressively by cameras all your life and saw one poked that far into your face you’d probably have a few choice words too.
I think Sky should know better in this regard. In bidding for the 2018, the FA rightly emphasised the unique passion for the game in England, one which permeates the realms of both player and fan alike.
Sometimes, passion spills over.
That’s not a vindication of Rooney, but this is something Sky Sports know well. They market this passion and use its appeal to earn an audience. Demand for innovation and that extra angle or three sees another TV camera shoved into every nook and cranny of football grounds, a revolution in how we watch the game but one which evidently has its downfalls.
The football pitch is not always a pretty place and they know that, and they will pick up some spilling-over passion thanks to their extensive (or invasive) coverage, whether it manifest itself in a bad tackle and a nasty injury, a confrontation with another player or cursing.
A few years back, Justin Timberlake decided to expose Janet Jackson on live television during the Superbowl half-time show. 800 million people were watching, and I’m sure you all remember the resulting controversy. American TV networks now screen the event with a five-second delay, aware that broadcasting live to so large an audience has its inherent dangers. Problem solved. Why can’t Sky accept a degree of responsibility for Rooney’s foul-mouthed tirade reaching the public at the very least and follow suit?
Blame Rooney, for his guttural outburst is not beyond reproach for its being spontaneous. Blame the FA’s over-zealous punitive desires. Blame referee Lee Mason for writing a match report to the FA based on television evidence. Blame Sky for their intrusive approach to the modern game. But still, blame Rooney.
