h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok, as a casual viewer, I have to ask what the deal is with the extra time at the end of the half and the end of the game - it's injury time, right? They play extra time at the end to make up for stoppages in play, if I understand correctly.

So why not just stop the clock when someone gets injured?

By the way,
USA! USA!

Sorry

You're right! The referee allows extra time to compensate for stoppages during the two halves.

A problem, I think most Americans have with soccer, is understanding the referee's function. His primary responsibility is the safety of the players; and secondary to that is the enforcement of the laws. The extent to which the flow of a game is dependant on the personality of the referee is soccer's great strength and it's weakness. Think of the referee as being like an orchestra conducter (as opposed to being a policeman, as in American sports). Time keeping is only the most obvious aspect of the referee's control of the game.

The men's World Cup in France was made a farce by the interference of FIFA bureaucrats. They took away the referees' discretionary powers (to a great extent) and turned them into simple, mindless enforcers. The result was a travesty. In the Women's World Cup, The referees seemed to deliberately give the players a lot of latitude. In my opinion, this was to forestall any criticism of the women's game lacking physical toughness, as well as to ensure that the games flowed well. There were occasions when they were too liberal, in my view; particularly in penalizing handball; and especially in not enforcing the laws in the penalty kicks at the end of the championship game (The goalkeepers aren't allowed to move prior to the ball being kicked: Scurry obviously took two or three steps in order to make the save. Players taking a penalty kick are not permitted to stutter-step when they approach the ball in order to misdirect the goalkeeper: there was a very obvious example of that).

Still, the best teams won, in both games, I think. Congratulations ladies!

It's going to be interesting to discover the American's reaction to cricket when they start playing in the new stadium being built in NYC.
How is a country which can't accept a goalless draw going to react to a five day drawn match?
Shameless plug - please read my page on Football http://www.h2g2.com/A76349
You can blame Vegiman for this. He suggested we need to become aggressive in marketing our pages.

Good stuff, WF! Keep up the good work.

Ok, so maybe Scurry took a few steps, but she has a great goalie name, so she gets a few breaks.

By the way J-T-G, pop over to my page when you have a moment and help name the softball team and the team clubhouse.

m'kay.

I think a drawn cricket match would be dealt with in a similar way to a drawn Major League Soccer game.

Each of the five bowlers would take it in turns to run up the pitch in an attempt to reach the stumps and knock the bails off. To prevent this from happening a selected batsman would defend his wicket by wielding a bat in a club-like manner. Of course using standard cricket bat could lead to serious injury, so instead a large oversized foam rubber bat will be used for the purpose. And now it seems that we're just a rubber feet short of "It's A Knockout!"

Is "It's a knockout" still on? That's what the olympics should be like. Great stuff!

I once saw an excerpt from a Japanese program along similar lines. In this individual competitors (just regular folk) had to battle through weird knockout-esque mazes to win prizes.

There is, or was, a French thing; where teams of four or five have to pit themselves against perverse obstacles to find clues needed to solve a puzzle at the end of the program. Some of the stunts on the French show were pure evil. In one episode a competitor had to pick tiny pieces of paper off the backs of scorpions to find one with a clue on it. The program was recorded in a prison/fortress in the sea somewhere.

The French thing may be Fort Boyard which was bought up and made into a UK prog by Channel 5 a couple of years ago. It was a more physical and less mental version of the Crystal Maze.

It's a knockout died at the end of the 80's although it may have been on Channel 5 at some point (repeats?). I think the Royal Family appearing on it sealed its fate.
I used to like seeing teams from a particular village or town compete against another. I thought it was great as a kid, forcing all these adults to wear daft costumes which seemed to be designed to induce pratfalls. "And here come the Belgians".
TV here is far too 'knowing' these days.

I did hear something somewhere about someone bringing back It's A Knockout, I think complete with Stuart Hall's laughter infested commentary (or should that be commentary infested laughter?). It seems kind of likely that if it was any of the terrestrial channels that it would have been Channel 5, given their track record of being unable to come up with anything original.

well, i'm not sure, but:


Go here

well, i'm not sure, but:


Go here

Went there and kind of agreed. I was a bit ABU myself the year that United pipped my team to the Championship but I don't hate them anymore. I prefer to ignore them. That said, I did enjoy last weekend's game at Stamford Bridge even though I believe Dennis Wise is an annoying little imp who deserves a bit more than Nicky Butt gave him and I cannot understand why Keegan is considering him for England.

And this post reminded me to tell John-T-G that It's A Knockout is back and a new series is currently airing on Channel 5 featuring Keith (My Alcohol Hell) Chegwin backed by Frank Bruno in the Stuart Hall gibbering hysteric Stuart Hall role. I can't say I've managed to catch it yet though.

Exciting news WF! Looking forward to hearing about it.

JTG

Happy NearYear WF. May all good things fall about you in heaps, and may problems be restricted to the type of having to choose from amongst them.

JTG

ps A parental lock-out seems to be in affect on your homepage.