Inselaffen

to the England Men's hockey team for becoming European Champions!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/othe...ey/8228522.stm

The Dean

Without Sean Kerly??? How???

Inselaffen

quite surprising. we havnt had a decent team for a few years. watched the recording of the final this morning and they do look a decent team.

of course it is getting zero media coverage back home. wasn't even on the BBC sport front page!

lionheart

Bugger me! Next we will be winning The Ashes

Inselaffen

next thing Citeh will be winning something

lionheart

We won a trophy over in some place called the Neu Camp the other week.

Inselaffen

some mikey mouse cup in an untelevised friendly match against Barcelona reserves does not mean winning something!

lionheart

It seems it was televised across North America on ESPN and I didn't know that Messi and Inbrahamovic were reserve players. Anyway, having watched all the EPL games played this season, I would much prefer to watch the current Man City side than Has Been United who need referees to help thim back into games they should really have lost.

Euc-

Tsk! Men's hockey is about as relevant as female football, at least you have something bouncy to look at during the soccer match.

Anyway, good on ya guys

Inselaffen

was a def penalty for United. Lucky to get away with the Fletcher penalty I do admit.

United are always slow starters so I have no worries.

The Dean

was a def penalty for United

Disagree with that. Look at Rooney's legs in the slo-mo replay from behind the goal - he's going to ground before there is any contact from Almunia. No away team would have been awarded that at any ground in the country.

Mike Dean is an honest ref who, overall, makes more right calls than wrong, but he too often gets the big decisions wrong in the big games.

Inselaffen

the keeper was going to make contact whether or not rooney was going down or not therefore according to the rules of football it was a foul and a penalty

it is a pity rooney did start to go down before contact was made though.

The Dean

The 'making contact' thing is a complete fallacy.

Look at Law 12. There are TEN offences that constitute a penalty (a direct free-kick actually, but it's a penalty if you commit one of them in your own area). The only one that might have applied in this case is "trips or attempts to trip an opponent". Which means the ref only has to decide if that's what Almunia intended. The fact that Rooney was already falling makes it no penalty in my book.

It's a good debate though - Grinning Rob, Derek White and Nigel Spackman were getting quite worked up about it on 'Goals on Monday' last night.......