There was quite a bit of that also last night from the Oman side. The ref did ignore them, to the point the announcer said they "were shooting themselves in the foot..." as when there is a true foul, the ref is already uninterested perhaps.redzonerocker wrote:....as for players going down feigning injury, the refs should just play on. the offending player will soon get up when he realises the game won't be stopped.
Regardless of sport, it evolves and so do the players. Look at swimming and track, world records are now broken every year. When basketball started in the USA in the 1800's, I think the peach baskets were nailed to trees at the 8' level, now it's evolved to 10' and read they are talking about 10'6" due to the ever increasing height and skill of the players. That's why the long range 3 point shot came about, to add more challenge to the game.
In baseball ( and perhaps cricket also) scores get higher each year as power hitters hit homeruns on a steady basis. Hard to enlarge a ballpark stadium, but new stadiums being built have larger fields, moving the homerun threshold back.
The NFL is the NFL and not much can be done there, except to perhaps decrease the width of the goal posts to stop 50 + yard kicked field goals.
However, perhaps Union rugby evolved from League as it made the game more challenging, tough, and required bigger men to accomplish the same thing, trys?
When I first started to watch football in the late 70' with the Germans and Brazil, I don't remember the type of long range and power shots we see today. What I see now is actually stunning from some of these players. 30-40 yards out and if you blink you miss it going into the net. I also don't remember seeing the massive curl some of these guys can put on a ball with free kicks these days.
I think in any sport, the rules/game has to evolve to match the skill of the players, regardless of old traditions. At the same time concerning football, spectators and supporters need to be considered and perhaps some changes like goal width and o/t vs penalty shots is something to think about. Pete