sportsmanship

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of watching the Arsenal vs Tottenham EPL match on the television. And I was unfortunate enough to witness the examples of sportsmanship which would put even young children to shame.

Firstly, Tottenham continued play even though Arsenal had two players on the ground, supposedly needing medical help, and went on to score the first goal of the game. It could be argued that the refree waved play on, and the two Arsenal players had in fact collided with each other. But it should still be common knowledge in soccer, that if a player is down on the ground, you should kick the ball out.

Secondly, Arsenal's striker appeared to foul Tottenham's defender ( I can't remember who were the players ) and then went on to supply the pass which eventually led to a beautiful goal from Thierry Henry. Well, this is at least forgivable, because the refree once again believe there was no reason to stop play, and since no one was injured, the striker would have been doing the correct thing to continue playing. But it still isn't right to knowingly commit a foul and go on to score the goal. That's so Drogba.


Anyway, today, I got to hear of one of the most bizzare case of bad sportsmanship in my 18 years of existence. It will surely dwarf the above two in terms of the lack of sportsmanship.

Meridian JC vs Raffles JC.
87th min: MJC 5 - 1 RJC

Then came Zeus. There was lightning in the skies and thus the match had to be paused. That's the right thing the refree did. Once Zeus left, perhaps it was still raining, but the match could carry on. The refree, doing his job well, consulted both teams and informed them that he was about to resume the match. Surely with only 3 minutes left, and the lightning clouds having just left, it would be safe to finish the game.

But NO! That wasn't what the RJC team, with their overwhelming intelligence, thought. They deemed it too dangerous to continue playing after lightning has passed. Note the fact that it has passed. Perhaps they also took into slight consideration that they were 5-1 down at the moment. So the option to replay the entire match another day seemed the best choice. Now, I don't even know how to comment on such sporting behaviour. I'm sure they had our interests at heart, that they were afraid we would get struck by lightning.

Anyway, before the match, I had respect for RJC. The fact that they were top of the group, perhaps unbeaten, led me to believe that they were a respectable and formidable opponent. They disappointed me. First they conceded 5 goals. Even if the goals were fluke goals, even if luck was on MJ's side, to concede 5 would have to mean they weren't that formidable right? Secondly they had to pull off such a stunt.

Respect. For RJC. What little bit of it that I had. Is now gone. Gone and it will never return.