Editorial about Injuries in English Soccer
Here's an interesting article about the recent violent injury in the English Premier League. Arsenal teenage midfielder Aaron Ramsey's leg was broken above the ankle. Both bones snapped. He will need a year to recover.This editorial in The Guardian's sports blog provides a good perspective on how we tend to view sports injuries like this. The author, Dara O'Brien, is tired of hearing people defend Ryan Shawcross, the Stoke City defender who broke Ramsey's leg. Yes, soccer is a violent sport, and these kinds of injuries do happen. But the furor surrounding this particular incident reveals yet again how bizarre and unnatural the world of sports is. You can find the article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/mar/06/aaron-ramsey-broken-leg-ryan-shawcross.
Spare us the sanctimony about Ryan Shawcross being a nice lad
What an incredible week it's been for fans of fracture porn. It started with the initial screening of Ryan Shawcross's "enthusiastic" swipe through Aaron Ramsey's leg, which led to those always thrilling words, "we've decided not to show you the replay because it's too distressing". By Match of the Day the hour was late enough, however, for Alan, Alan and Gary to show it in slow motion and offer us a blow-by-blow. By the following morning the papers felt sufficiently comfortable with the strengths of our stomachs to almost universally run either pictures of the impact or Ramsey sprawled on the turf with his lower leg at unexpected right-angle.
I am squeamish. I felt queasy reading about the injury, initially on the minute-by-minute report on my phone. When I finally got to see Match of the Day, I turned away from the footage. I've not sought it out online and was unhappy to find graphic shots of the injury over the match reports on Sunday morning.
My natural aversion to gore was amplified by a fan's sense of loss. Ramsey was clearly being groomed as the future of the club, a box-to-box midfielder already becoming noted on-field for his vision and drive, and one who came across as level-headed, quiet and down-to-earth off the field. He's also Welsh-English bilingual, which I admire, being the Celt I am.
I feel all this was worth mentioning given the amount of energy that has been expended defending the character of Ryan Shawcross in the past seven days. I don't care about Shawcross' intentions. I'm not seeking revenge, nor do I care about extending his ban or any other form of punishment. I just find the overwhelming desire of people in the game to assert his goodness to be a little infantile. What are we in, the playground? He broke a man's leg. It doesn't actually matter if he meant to or not. Stop telling us what a lovely guy he is.
For one thing, it's self-defeating. The more often people say "he's not that kind of player!", the more people will pore over the evidence suggesting that, yes, he is that kind of player. He broke Francis Jeffers's ankle in 2007; he injured Emmanuel Adebayor in the Stoke-Arsenal fixture last season, even though Adebayor and the ball were off the pitch at the time. Bloggers have even turned up video evidence of Shawcross's crunching tackles in reserve matches.
None of which we'd even be mentioning if football didn't go into its bizarre character debate every time an injury like this occurs. This doesn't happen in the real world. If you hit somebody with your car and smash up their leg, see how far you'll get with a judge, getting your work colleagues to go: "He's not that kind of driver." Nobody cares. You broke his leg.
In the real world, you can get jail for this sort of thing, as Mark Chapman found this week, sentenced to six months for assault when he broke Terry Johnston's leg in two places in a Sunday league match. In the real world "he's a lovely lad" doesn't really cut it.
Football exists in a bizarre little bubble. Roberto Mancini, the Manchester City manager, hinted recently that it was unsatisfactory that Carlos Tevez had been slow to return to training after the premature birth of his daughter. In this paper, this was reported as possibly "opening him up to accusations of insensitivity". You think so? Really? Insensitive? I'd say it made him look like a horse's arse. This is the self-centred way children talk in the playground.
To grown-ups, a premature birth is more important than any week's work, no matter if it's on Sky Sports or not. Equally, grown-ups have to get used to the idea that sometimes potentially decent people do stupid things and hurt others. And saying "there, there, you're a nice lad" doesn't make it go away.
Maybe it's a bit much to expect footballers to be too mature. Because maybe taking kids out of school at 13 and then making them multi-millionaires by 18 isn't that great a way to build character. And maybe we only spot this when the real world comes crashing in, whether with a baby on a ventilator or an ambulance by the side of the pitch.
What an incredible week it's been for fans of fracture porn. It started with the initial screening of Ryan Shawcross's "enthusiastic" swipe through Aaron Ramsey's leg, which led to those always thrilling words, "we've decided not to show you the replay because it's too distressing". By Match of the Day the hour was late enough, however, for Alan, Alan and Gary to show it in slow motion and offer us a blow-by-blow. By the following morning the papers felt sufficiently comfortable with the strengths of our stomachs to almost universally run either pictures of the impact or Ramsey sprawled on the turf with his lower leg at unexpected right-angle.
I am squeamish. I felt queasy reading about the injury, initially on the minute-by-minute report on my phone. When I finally got to see Match of the Day, I turned away from the footage. I've not sought it out online and was unhappy to find graphic shots of the injury over the match reports on Sunday morning.
My natural aversion to gore was amplified by a fan's sense of loss. Ramsey was clearly being groomed as the future of the club, a box-to-box midfielder already becoming noted on-field for his vision and drive, and one who came across as level-headed, quiet and down-to-earth off the field. He's also Welsh-English bilingual, which I admire, being the Celt I am.
I feel all this was worth mentioning given the amount of energy that has been expended defending the character of Ryan Shawcross in the past seven days. I don't care about Shawcross' intentions. I'm not seeking revenge, nor do I care about extending his ban or any other form of punishment. I just find the overwhelming desire of people in the game to assert his goodness to be a little infantile. What are we in, the playground? He broke a man's leg. It doesn't actually matter if he meant to or not. Stop telling us what a lovely guy he is.
For one thing, it's self-defeating. The more often people say "he's not that kind of player!", the more people will pore over the evidence suggesting that, yes, he is that kind of player. He broke Francis Jeffers's ankle in 2007; he injured Emmanuel Adebayor in the Stoke-Arsenal fixture last season, even though Adebayor and the ball were off the pitch at the time. Bloggers have even turned up video evidence of Shawcross's crunching tackles in reserve matches.
None of which we'd even be mentioning if football didn't go into its bizarre character debate every time an injury like this occurs. This doesn't happen in the real world. If you hit somebody with your car and smash up their leg, see how far you'll get with a judge, getting your work colleagues to go: "He's not that kind of driver." Nobody cares. You broke his leg.
In the real world, you can get jail for this sort of thing, as Mark Chapman found this week, sentenced to six months for assault when he broke Terry Johnston's leg in two places in a Sunday league match. In the real world "he's a lovely lad" doesn't really cut it.
Football exists in a bizarre little bubble. Roberto Mancini, the Manchester City manager, hinted recently that it was unsatisfactory that Carlos Tevez had been slow to return to training after the premature birth of his daughter. In this paper, this was reported as possibly "opening him up to accusations of insensitivity". You think so? Really? Insensitive? I'd say it made him look like a horse's arse. This is the self-centred way children talk in the playground.
To grown-ups, a premature birth is more important than any week's work, no matter if it's on Sky Sports or not. Equally, grown-ups have to get used to the idea that sometimes potentially decent people do stupid things and hurt others. And saying "there, there, you're a nice lad" doesn't make it go away.
Maybe it's a bit much to expect footballers to be too mature. Because maybe taking kids out of school at 13 and then making them multi-millionaires by 18 isn't that great a way to build character. And maybe we only spot this when the real world comes crashing in, whether with a baby on a ventilator or an ambulance by the side of the pitch.
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