Polling Chelsea

Post to Football 365 in the aftermath of Graham Poll's retaliatory outburst to the Chelsea starlets:

"I entirely condone whatever Graham Poll said. If it is allowed (tacitly, by the lack of cautions) for him to receive foul and abusive language then he should be allowed to dish it out in return. "An eye for an eye and soon we'll all be blind," said somebody who looked far better in a nappy than me, but a bit of retaliation always feels good and, in certain situations, is justified.

How many of us cheered when Cantona launched himself into the stands, when Juninho told Albert exactly where to go, when the mighty ZZ made the world take notice by flooring his abuser in the World Cup Final?

Professional footballers get away with murder (almost literally in some drink-driving cases) and something needs to be done to clean up the sport. Our refs are now miked up which is a step in the right direction and presumably a prelude to allowing us, the audience, to share in the referee's comments, a la rugby.

But before that will be permissible on live television, beamed to generations of impressionable youths and their even more impressionable parents, the language directed at, and the general attitudes to, the ref need to be improved.

Cards clearly don't work - see the yellow card for post-goal shirt-stripping. So I propose perma-tan. They'll be far more concerned about avoiding "a Dale Winton" than missing the next three games and jetting off to La Manga. Admittedly (and regrettably) this punishment wouldn't work on some who already embrace such horrors (see Cristiano "glow in the dark" Ronaldo) so other means need to be invented, and what better place perhaps than this forum."