OPINION
Whether we like it or not, diving is a grey area. Obviously nobody wants to see cheating in professional football, but things are rarely as cut and dry as we would like them to be.
When it comes to simulation where contact has been made, for instance, how can a referee quantify what justifies enough force to make a player go down under challenge?
Similarly, if a player takes evasive action to avoid a potentially dangerous tackle and goes down without contact being made, should that count as a dive?
It’s tricky to say, but at the other end of the spectrum, some acts of cheating are so blatant that they have to be punished to avoid them becoming the norm.
Take Dwight Gayle’s dive against Nottingham Forest on Tuesday night for instance. No contact is made, nor is there any reason why Gayle could not continue with his motion had he not decided to go to ground.
Unfortunately for Forest, Lee Mason bought it and it ultimately cost Martin O’Neill’s two precious points, but the relevant governing bodies must now step in and punish Gayle for the incident.
Often the precedent is for incidents to go unnoticed if a referee himself has seen it during the course of the match, but in the case of diving that is intended to fool him and affect the outcome of a clash, there has to be more done to eradicate that kind of behaviour.
It’s too late to rescind the decision, or two give Forest the two points they were robbed of, but now Gayle can still be made an example of, and there’s some justice in that.