Once upon a time in the mid-’90s, I was cruising towards winning a very nice 100/1 fixed odds bet on 4 draws. It would have worked, too, if it hadn’t been for some dumb ref who awarded Tottenham a last-minute, edge-of-the-area free kick when a Leeds player slid in for a tackle only to find the ball bobbling off his thigh and back to the keeper. Spurs scored, which is very rarely a good thing anyway, and my bet was lost.
Now, some parts of the Catholic Church, I am assured, have re-thought their views on suicide. Suicide’s a mortal sin but the thinking is that anyone in enough despair to be suicidal clearly isn’t in their right mind and therefore shouldn’t be held responsible by way of eternal damnation.
I don’t wish to make light of the terrible suffering of suicides and their loved ones, but precisely the same logic is being applied to football’s back pass rule. When it was introduced, all manner of slices and nudges and deflections back to the keeper were adjudged back passes and penalised, sometimes costing innocents like me good money, but now they’re never given. Even the most blatant side-foot back to the goalie passes unnoted. Nobody, after all, is stupid enough to make such a damaging decision, right?