By Richard Lee - 27/09/2009

Game Over

Before I talk about injury-time specifically, I want to make the point that it's always baffled me how you can have two games of football where the ball is in play for 65 minutes during one and 50 minutes during another. I find it really interesting.

It gets me thinking that game management has become part of football; keeping the ball in a corner, getting cheap fouls, that sort of thing. All factors designed to keep the ball out of play as much as possible.

This behaviour is still seen as a skill in football, even though it's pretty unethical in terms of the sport as an entertainment product.

I'd personally have a ball-in-play clock which runs up to an hour - but let's get back to the topic in hand about injury-time.

Looking back to the Man United incident specifically, referees will generally try to end the game with the ball in the middle of the pitch somewhere or having just been kicked back into play from a restart. Fans aren't happy if they're denied 'one last attack' and I think the ref for the United v City game got caught out by that natural behaviour.

Time-keeping is down to the discretion of the referee, all players know that. If, say, three minutes is shown and you start wasting time, in my experience all refs will add some more on to the end of that minimum amount.

I don't see any harm in having a time-keeper in the stands but, like I said, I'd have that stop-clock for 60 minutes worth of ball in play. Regardless of how the ball is kept in play, it seems an altogether fairer way of ensuring all matches are uniform in some respect.

There is still that balance to be struck between factual matters and opinion & discretion. If games were black & white, rather than the colourful nature of today's matches, there would be far fewer talking points.
Managers who have the 'Poor Me' thing going on about injury-time at the end of a match are probably trying to deflect attention away from the details of the game itself.

I'm certain there isn't a referee on the list who isn't trying to be fair at all times. You have to take the rough with the smooth whether you're a player, manager or supporter.

Without that capacity for any individual decisions, it'd be far less interesting!