(This is not an article for people who are offended by flatulence. If you are one of those people, please select another article to read.)<\/p>\n
Headline<\/strong>: Swedish Footballer Sent off for Farting on the Pitch<\/a><\/p>\n If only the above article had been about cricket instead of soccer, the title of this piece would have written itself\u2014\u201cWind in the Willows\u201d. However, it was soccer, so we have to work with what we\u2019re given.<\/p>\n When I read the BBC article, two thoughts struck me. The first was, \u201cThe BBC actually allows the word \u2018fart\u2019 in its content, and more specifically, in its headlines?\u201d The second was, \u201cWhat the heck has letting rip got to do with the rules of Association Football?\u201d<\/p>\n Surprisingly, I can find little scholarly research online about the effects of \u201cholding it in\u201d on one\u2019s health. Unsurprisingly, there is a plethora of material on men\u2019s websites, forums such as Yahoo, and medical websites of questionable authority.<\/p>\n According to the limited amount of material on the wonderweb that I\u2019m prepared to access (there\u2019s a lot of sketchy-looking websites that I don\u2019t want to risk visiting), holding it in is bad for you in all sorts of ways, from the mild discomfort of bloating, indigestion and heartburn to a potentially life-threatening condition called diverticulitis.<\/p>\n Given the physical demands of playing footie at any decent level, I would have thought that a body full of gas would have a significantly negative effect on a footballer\u2019s performance. Just the need to clench while running, jumping for a header, or executing one of those impressive-looking overhead scissor-kicks would undoubtedly challenge a person\u2019s concentration. Compound that with a belly that feels like you\u2019ve just eaten an ostrich or are about to give birth to one, and I\u2019m sure you can see that \u201cholding it in\u201d is ill-advised for sportspeople of all persuasions.<\/p>\n Apparently, the referee deemed the player\u2019s gaseous omission to be \u201cunsporting behaviour\u201d.\u00a0 Really? It\u2019s not like the guy trumped in someone\u2019s face, or farted and followed through. Besides, if he had, the only foul he would have committed would have been on himself.<\/p>\n Rather than ridicule the ref\u2019s decision from a position of relative ignorance (I have never refereed a soccer game, haven\u2019t trained to do so, and probably never will), I looked up the Laws of the Game and the interpretive notes that accompany them to see how our Swedish soccer player could have contravened the rules, so that I could ridicule the referee\u2019s decision from a position of relative informedness (yes, there is such a word). Here are the possibilities I came up with regarding unsporting behaviour.<\/p>\n Can a fart be described as a \u201cverbal distraction\u201d? Does it show a lack of respect for the game? In both cases, I\u2019m tempted to answer in the negative.<\/p>\n Without the follow-through, a fart doesn\u2019t leave a mark on the field of play, so that one\u2019s out.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m absolutely convinced that the trumpet call of a footballer\u2019s lower alimentary system isn\u2019t going to interfere with the opposition\u2019s concentration in the heat of a \u201cpromising attack\u201d. It didn\u2019t work for John Cleese in Monty Python and the Holy Grail<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Cleese\u2019s character (a French soldier) was trying to deter King Arthur from entering a French-held castle in England, and shouted from the castle ramparts, \u201cI fart in your general direction\u2026\u201d\u2014in an outrageous French accent, of course! (It was the livestock fusillade that repelled the ensuing attack, by the way.)<\/p>\n But despite all this, the official who refereed the game in question deemed the action to be unsporting behaviour. Heck\u2014if this kind of interpretation of the rules sticks, what\u2019s to stop a team from nobbling its opponents with fart powder and then getting them all sent off?<\/p>\n Sending wind forth from the anus (Oxford Dictionary definition circa 1944) is hardly premeditated behaviour (unless you\u2019re Le p\u00e9tomane<\/a>). It\u2019s not like soccer players say to each other, \u201cI think I\u2019ll eat a couple of cans of baked beans before the game lads. You never know when you\u2019ll get the opportunity to fart at someone.\u201d So why on earth would it be deemed a cardable sin? (I wonder if Le p\u00e9tomane ever played soccer. Now he was one person who could have been accused of delivering a deliberate fart.)<\/p>\n A member of the opposing team heard the offence being committed from \u201ca good distance away\u201d. He\u2019s quoted as saying \u201cit\u2019s the strangest thing I\u2019ve seen on a pitch\u2026\u201d The BBC report takes this to refer to the punishment rather than the offence, so it seems the only person causing a stink was the referee.<\/p>\n Since there is frequent talk of having a separate Olympics for athletes who use banned substances, perhaps there could be a separate league for flatulent footballers. Maybe there\u2019s even a chance that they could play Blow Football.<\/p>\n All joking aside though, soccer is plagued with drama queens faking injuries following a tackle\u2014this is a much more pressing problem for the game than any number of flatulent footballers. Everyone passes gas, even (insert name of your favourite world leader). Neither the Pope, nor President Obama, nor Angela Merkel indulges in questionable slide tackles, yet they all toot.<\/p>\n I suspect that players in the upper echelons of football will drop one on a regular basis on the pitch. Presumably the crowd noise would cover it. I can picture the Pel\u00e9s, Ronaldos and Beckhams of the world reading the BBC article and thinking \u201cthere but for the grace of God go I.\u201d<\/p>\n I shudder to think what would happen if this interpretation of the Rules of the Game were to be universally applied. I fear that fans everywhere would begin to witness a new phenomenon\u2014exploding soccer players\u2014at which stage they could be carded for \u201cmaking an unauthorised mark on the pitch\u201d.<\/p>\n And at that point, soccer could no longer legitimately be called \u201cThe Beautiful Game\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (This is not an article for people who are offended by flatulence. If you are one of those people, please select another article to read.) Headline: Swedish Footballer Sent off for Farting on the Pitch If only the above article had been about cricket instead of soccer, the title of this piece would have written itself\u2014\u201cWind in the Willows\u201d. However,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[489,77],"tags":[117,115,118,116,119],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scat","category-rant","tag-blow-football","tag-farting-footballer","tag-holding-it-in","tag-laws-of-the-game","tag-letting-rip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1633,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n