Knock Knock...

Who’s there?

The FA....

Once again, the FA is the punch line of the joke. The FA has managed to cover themselves in glory this week with their ruling about Marouane Fellaini. To quickly recap for those who didn’t see the incident, or even know about it, in the game between Everton and Stoke, on top of other incidents, Fellaini head butted Ryan Shawcross. The head butt was not seen by the officials and Fellaini did not receive punishment during the game for this. Following the match, David Moyes did the absolute right thing and said that there was no excuse that kind of action on the pitch and that Fellaini deserved to be banned. To be fair, if anyone came to Fellaini’s defence after seeing this, they would seriously need their head examined (and no, not with a head butt!)

Violent conduct on the pitch, depending on the nature of the conduct, carries a wide variety of punishments. Now, I figured Fellaini would be hit with a huge fine and a lengthy ban for this head butt. In my mind, that’s the very least he deserved. What actually happened though is he accepted the charge and received a 3 game suspension. Yeah, that is pathetic. A 3 game suspension for attacking Shawcross in a way that could have left him seriously injured or dead is just ridiculous. What a terrible message to send to football supporters. The reason given for why he received a 3 game ban is that had the officials seen the attack, he would have been red carded. The other alleged offences (I say alleged because I haven’t seen them) were not deemed worthy of punishment and therefore ignored.

It is instances like this which turn me off from the sport of football, a sport I once adored. I struggle to put up with this sort of rubbish. Personally, I would have gone above the referee’s head and looked at the other instances. After all, the officials had already said they didn’t see the main issue in this disciplinary – what’s to say they clearly saw the others? I would have then given him an indefinite ban and passed the case over to the Crown Prosecution Service and suggested they start criminal proceedings. Look, why should Fellaini not face prosecution for that sort of behaviour when if a person on a busy street did that, they would. I also would have given him a large fine. Fining a footballer £25-50k is utterly pointless when most Premier League footballers earn that in a week. I’d guess Fellaini is on a similar amount, if not more. Fine him about £500k. That would show him that sort of behaviour is unacceptable and it might cause him to think twice before he “loses his head” again.

The FA will never get properly tough with footballers though, and that is why I’m falling out of love with football. But this whole post isn’t about a negative outlook on sport. This weekend, BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) was crowned. I blogged about it before and guessed the 10 people who would make the shortlist. Then the BBC announced that the shortlist would contain 12 names. Those 12 were:

·         Nicola Adams

·         Ben Ainslie

·         Jessica Ennis

·         Mo Farah

·         Katherine Grainger

·         Sir Chris Hoy

·         Rory McIllroy

·         Andy Murray

·         Ellie Simmonds

·         Sarah Storey

·         David Weir

·         Bradley Wiggins

That is quite a short list. I said in my blog I thought Andy Murray might win, and I voted for him on the night (more than once). He in fact finished third with 14.17% of the vote. Jessica Ennis finished 2^nd with 22.92% of the vote but in first place with nearly a third of all votes cast (30.25%) was Bradley Wiggins.  Wiggins is a very deserving SPOTY who according to reports out today, will be knighted in the New Year. Again, he is completely deserving of this honour. One thing that BBC SPOTY reminded us all is that 2012 has been such a superb year of sport. 2013 won’t be as good for the simple fact there is no Olympics or Rugby World Cup, but still, it can still be good!