Portland Bill

Our approach play at times is fantastic, our final ball, shocking. 

6 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

Has it "ruined the spectacle" for you?

Do teams that have a player sent to the bin just sit in and time waste for ten minutes?

No, I haven’t witnessed any of that. All I hear is the other players telling their team mate what he pxxk he was, for getting sin binned. 

3 hours ago, Jose said:

Will ruin football as a spectacle. Will make teams sit back and waste time until they come back on. Tell you something, things like this make me think about just giving up on the sport completely. Slowly falling out of love with the game that i was obsessed with for the last 25 years. 

It doesn’t spoil the game, it makes players behave properly. If players can’t behave properly then tough. 

I’ve actually fallen out of love with the game at the top, because I’ve become sick of the diving, cheating, dissent, and trying to con officials for 90 minutes. 
Players and managers need to start behaving properly, if they won’t, then accept the punishment and go off for ten minutes, simple. 

31 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I definitely think something is needed to distinguish the “honest” attempted tackle on an opponent in a really good counter-attack (yellow) and the “dangerous hack” on an opponent in same situation (red).  In particular the shirt grab / arm around / piggy back (Luke O’Nien v Alex Scott).  That is much easier for the ref to decide, essentially using the arms or torso (body check) to stop a counter should be blue card.

So, if the Reds Association can come up with some pretty clear guidelines, why not is my view.

There has to be some penalty to blatantly stopping a counterattack.  I’ve been pleased to see the odd ref give a red card where the stooping of the opponent has been reckless, e.g. the wild swipe across the back of the opponent’s legs.

The next question is - how long is 10 mins?  10 mins game time, or 10 minutes ball-in-play.  It is likely that the team with the player in the sin bin will try to waste as much as that as possible.  Imagine Preston under Alex Neil!!!

So totally in favour of it, but worried about the implementation.

At grassroots it’s 10 minutes from the referees watch. As you can imagine, the player is desperate to get back on after 5 minutes!.

I don’t know what will happen at the top level, I imagine it will be handed over to the fourth official to time it.

The big issue is that players at the top have been allowed for far too long to get away with abuse, and swearing at the officials. Grassroots players see this on tv, and think it’s acceptable.
 

The officials at the lower levels have paid for the leniency that the top level officials give players. Hopefully the top level officials will now use this new tool properly, and the abuse will stop… time will tell. 

I’ve been watching football for the last 2-3 seasons in Somerset county league, and this league has had sin bins.
 I’ve found they work really well, players who are at ‘boiling point’ etc get 10 minutes to basically calm down on the touchline, you see a marked improvement from them when they come back on.

Its a really good piece of armour for a referee to have, and use. So far I think it’s only been used for abuse etc, but it can only be good that it will be also used for cynical “ taking one for the team” fouls. It’s about time these were stamped down on with more than just a yellow card. 

9 minutes ago, Forest Red said:

Give your head a wobble mate - winning a cup tie in a competition we were never going to win or staying in the Prem worth 10’s millions?

And that’s why I hate the money league, and personally have no desire to get there. All clubs like yours, and mine, would/do……care about is not getting relegated. What a miserable way to watch football. 

1 minute ago, Unan said:

Is this how you old ones used to listen to the football every week??

Yep!

We didn’t even used to get commentary, radio Bristol would go to Phil Tottle about ten times over the whole 90 minutes, just for updates, or goal updates!. 

16 minutes ago, petehinton said:

If it was Isaac Finch, he has been signed by us as of last week I believe. Will be with the u18s. 

Yes, it was him. 

3 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

If you think the pitch doesn’t look great (and it doesn’t) and noting Tauntons issues with their pitch I was surprised to see Truro are playing all their remaining home games there now!

Truro ( as you probably know) have been sharing Plymouth Parkway’s ground.
Plymouth pitch is in an awful state, 2-3 areas are only fit for mud wrestling in quick sand!.
Unless they get 2/3 weeks without rain, they won’t be playing on that pitch for a while. 

As for Truro, I was told on Saturday, that the FA have told them they must show proof by the end of March, that their new ground will be ready for next season, otherwise they will be demoted two divisions. 

On 03/02/2024 at 14:42, petehinton said:

Luke Purnell, Weston born and raised who’s been their number 1 for the majority of the last 10 years, contract ripped up by the very strange man Bartlett. 
 

Signing for Bridgwater, three divisions below, on likely similar wages - which shows how much money (I’m sure legit money too…) Bridgy are throwing around. 

Bridgwater had their keeper sent off last night, they lost 1-4 at home to Barnstaple in the league cup. So good timing by them to sign a new keeper!. 

3 minutes ago, luke_bristol said:

It saddens me but Sam bell seems to be a shadow of the player he was

He always looks scared stiff to me.

Shows very little quality, also plays with his head down more than up.

Personally I don’t think he’s good enough for this league. 

15 hours ago, Numero Uno said:

I've no doubt you are completely wrong...........because I'm not the type that completely fails to see the human side of things. But hey, as long as those ******* rules are applied bang on, word for word, we can all have a good tug.

Go and have a lie down, you sound really angry. 

1 hour ago, 1960maaan said:

If he never took his shirt off it shouldn't be a booking.

The Law states.

A player removing his shirt to reveal slogans or advertising will be sanctioned by the competition organiser. The team of a player whose basic compulsory equipment has political, religious or personal slogans or statements will be sanctioned by the competition organiser or by FIFA.

He took his shirt off. 

1 hour ago, View from the Dolman said:

If they HAVE to adhere to the laws of the game, why are goalkeepers not routinely penalised for committing the offence of "controls the ball with the hand/arm for more than six seconds before releasing it"?

Referees ‘manage’ those situations, you will find a referee will shout to the keeper “play it” when he deems the keeper should. Everyone involved in the game seems to have accepted this as the norm now. 
 

On 27/01/2024 at 19:30, Komazawa said:

Allocation will be around 2800. 

It’s the FA cup, so I would think they will have to give a higher allocation than league games. 

3 hours ago, Numero Uno said:

Given the young kid has literally LOST HIS MOTHER this week I highly doubt he has been spending a great deal of time thinking about ways he could avoid a booking. Just call it out for what it is.......an appalling example of rules being applied just for the sake of rules being applied. Anyone with a modicum of common sense would apply common sense and be more than happy to explain why if they got hauled over the coals for it.

Referees are not allowed to use common sense, they HAVE to adhere to the laws of the game, that’s it.

If a player does the same next week and doesn’t get booked, I’ve no doubt you will be complaining about inconsistency. 

6 hours ago, Andy082005 said:

Absolutely ridiculous. That’s the problem with referees now - they are not trusted to use a bit of common sense. 
 

“rules are rules” - its absolute nonsense. Yes - rules are there for a reason, but there has to be the opportunity for referees to take a common sense approach 

Had he not booked him - no one would even have mentioned it 

Like the Liverpool / Spurs goal. Play should have been pulled back - but because it was “too late”. They didn’t 

 

Don’t blame the referee, blame the law makers. If the Referee doesn’t follow the laws of the game, he will get marked down by the assessor. You could clearly see he didn’t want to book him, but had too. 
The player took his shirt off, he would have 100% known he would get booked. 

53 minutes ago, Street red said:

They will have players back for the replay and there definitely better at home so it will be a different game.

Think I’m right in saying, they have more players playing on the African Nations cup than any other Prem team. I imagine some of them will be back for the replay. 

1 minute ago, 38MC said:

There were mistakes but that’s human. There was one instance late in the game where cam Pring had his ankle scythed by their player and he didn’t give a thing. That was such a blatant foul. I didn’t see the reason they got a free kick in injury time but could have been my eye sight playing tricks. Agree that it was nice he was composed enough to give himself and his assistants time to come to each decision though. It appeared indecisive and reactionary to crowd initially but it soon became clear what he was doing. 

The Forest free kick in injury time, was given when Taylor Gardener  grabbed and pulled back a Forest player by the neck, it was off the ball, and a stupid thing to do. 

45 minutes ago, ChrisJ said:

Yes but don’t underestimate that this was an easy game to ref 

He made it easy to ref, give him credit. 

Played some really nice football, dominated large parts of the game.

But we are very predictable in the final third, would love to see us pop some one two’s centrally on the edge of the box, but we 100% go wide and look to cross. Opposition teams know this, and defend accordingly. 

1 hour ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

So are they going to also allow submissions from fans of clubs such as Leicester detailing the impact Evertons cheating has had on their clubs? 

Ultimately Everton fans are still watching their team in the premier league because of the cheating. They would be well advised to shut up. 

Weren’t Leicester one of the clubs that cheated ffp in the Championship? 

1 hour ago, Silvio Dante said:

I’m guessing Bridgwater had a game? Either that or Andy knows the danger of letting people know when you’ll be somewhere else and your house will be empty….

Bridgwater’s game was called of 30 minutes before kick off today.

Not sure if he could get ‘re directed’ to Bristol in time!!. 

1 hour ago, RedRoss said:

Aldershot fans seems to think that fee is too low..

https://www.shotsweb.site/shotsweb/viewtopic.php?t=56409

Plus a few hate us for some reason?!

We used to ‘play up’ big time in the 80’s at Aldershot, pitch invasions, crowd trouble etc. I imagine some of their fan base can remember. 

4 hours ago, Lord Northski said:

Rather awkwardly, Bridgwater isn’t that beautiful either. And until recently was rumoured to be twinned with Chernobyl. 

I live in Bridgwater, I’m thinking of buying a place in Chernobyl though!.