Rules and regulations
By John Dickinson on 9th Jul 10
All sports from tiddly winks to Formula 1 need to be regulated but with the best will in the world not all rules are good rules...
LIKE most blokes I pretty much follow any sport. Anything on two (motorised) wheels to start with and then a sliding scale down through whatever is current and exciting. And thanks to the magic of Sky Plus, the only technology I have truly mastered(!) I record tons of stuff to watch into the small hours!
So it starts with MXGP, MotoGP and World Superbikes. Then other stuff. England aside, what is there to say and who cares anyway, the World Cup enjoyed some genuine good matches, Nadal was awesome at Wimbledon, and I'm always fascinated by the Tour de France cycle race. Those guys really are something special.
But it doesn't matter what sport you watch, from cricket to carpet bowls (no, I don't actually watch the latter) they are all linked by at least one common denominator. They have to have rules whether they are good, bad or indifferent. And some of them certainly seem to fit into the latter category.
Anyone watch the Ghana football match where they eventually lost on penalties? In the final minutes of the game they had a shot blocked on the line by a blatant and totally deliberate hand ball. No hand and the ball was in the net – no question. They were awarded a penalty which was thudded against the bar. Where was the justice in that? Had it been a rugby match they would have been awarded a penalty try, or goal in the case of football and that would have been that. Match won – end of story. As I say, they lost on penalties which to me was a travesty of justice.
Moving on to Moto 2 from Barcelona last weekend another true farce evolved. Andrea Iannone was judged to have made an overtake under yellow flags and had to sufferv a penalty. No problem with that. What the rules apparently state is that he should drop back to second position.
But how the hell do you convey that piece of information to a guy who is flashing past the pits at 170mph plus while trying to stay a hair's breadth in front of 39 crazed, totally focussed rivals. If he even blinks someone will run straigfht into the back of him. What followed was pure farce.
His pit crew went through the motions of frantically flapping their arms. God knows what he made of that. They put out various pit signals which made no sense – even when you knew what they were attempting to convey.
After that, as far as I could see, they scribbled some more meaningless writing on a scrap of paper with a felt-tip and waved that over the pit wall. You would have struggled to read it, never mind understand what it was attempting to tell you, had you ambled past at point-blank range pushing a fully loaded wheelbarrow – never mind clinging to a rapidly accelerating racing motorcycle.
Eventually, a Dorna official had to actually stand in the track and penalise the hapless Iannone with a pit lane ride-through. Administered because he was trying to win a race and hadn't a clue what all the confusing signals were about.
Purely in my position as an armchair fan I was appalled at the total lack of professionalism shown by the officialdom present. Apart from anything else it was damned dangerous with the rider swooping across the track to try and make sense of the crazed signals.
We saw, with the horror crash on the finish line at the culmination of the race, what a split-second's inattention resulted in.
There was nothing totally professional about that little episode and I hope all the blazered and airline-shirted officials strutting around pitlane do something to prevent a re-occurrence before the next race.
Some rules are introduced for a very good and specific reason – but end up being used for an entirely different purpose. At the recent World Trial in Scotland the third section ended up being cancelled on the opening day, robbing many spectators, some of whom had stood waiting for several hours, of the chance to see their heroes perform. Why?
Well, one rider, Adam Raga as it happens but that doesn't really matter, it could have been anyone, dislodged several rocks on a steep climb which fell right onto the obvious run-up line.
Now the rules state that any rock (object) moved by a motorcycle in the section cannot be subsequently touched. The rule is rightly designed to stop riders (and Minders of course) booting rocks here, there and everywhere in order to favour their riders and very likely alter the whole meaning of the section.
The obvious solution in Scotland was for an official to simply shift the offending rocks but given the rules the only legal course of action open to the organisers was to abandon the section on ‘safety grounds'.
A perfect illustration of a rule introduced for a genuine and valid reason being, in the opinion of some, mis-appropriated.
As previously stated, of course you have to have structure or otherwise all you get is anarchy and fun though that may be in small doses, rules are rules...whether they make sense or not.
And in this case the trials rule does make sense – even though it infuriated the paying public.