Football rules

They've brought in so many rules in football over the years, all with the objective of making it a more exciting game. Quite frankly they should've just left them alone, all except fot the passing back to the keeper rule. That has made the game better.

What confuses me most is the use of the Yellow card. I thought the yellow card was meant to act as a deterrent. It seems not. The yellow card is an accepted part of the game and players know they'll get them (sometimes committing cynical fouls, knowing they'll get a card!). it doesn't seem to be a deterrent for anything though, does it. Why is that?

If you get a yellow card, it doesn't really impact on you. Yes, you have to be careful to not get another one...but the whole point is you should be playing in a sporting way and not getting any cards anyway...so it shouldn't change anything. If you get 5 yellow cards, then you get a one match suspension. With the size of squads these days if a player gets a 5th yellow, the manager can plan ahead and have a replacement of a similar standard. So it's not really a deterrent, it's definitely not any sort of punishment. It's nothing more than a rap over the knuckles!

Now I like my football. I love watching good football and can't stand watching players kicking lumps out of each other because they're too slow to make a tackle or, worse, they just want to stop someone and keep hacking him down. If that's how you have to play your football then just face it... you're not good enough! End of story. If Ronaldo is river-dancing down the wing at you and you aren't good enough to stop him, severing his leg at the knee is not an acceptable course of action. Football is a contact sport and should stay that way... solid, strong physical contact within the spirit of competition is great (who remembers Leeds v Chelsea in the early 70's with Chopper Harris and Norman Hunter? Great entertaining footie!). But fouling as a routine way of stopping someone who you can't stop is just deeatist and pathetic.

What the FA/FIFA, whoever, should do is follow the example in rugby. If you get a yellow card, you get 10 minutes in the sin-bin. This should stop the fouling... if you have immediate consequences to the offence it will force teams to think twice ablout their tactics. If you know you'll be a man down for 10 minutes you'll soon put a stop to it.

But you could have 2 or 3 players off at the same time, I hear you scream. That's right, you could. So stop the fouling and focus on playing footie. And then, in return, get the referees to differentiate between cycnical or deliberate fouling and strong, fair (if fractionally late) tackles. Then the football can flow. There's nothing wrong with a crippling tackle on Ronaldo every now and then, if it's fair with the right intent.

So... bring in the sin bin and make the yellow card the deterrent it should be and let football be football.