Sports fans "sick and tired" of unpunished, blatant cheating!

A site put up by a lover of football on the 14th of
February against blatant cheating in sport going unpunished got a lot more
attention than expected. Without any publicity as such the site almost
immediately started getting contributions to it's pages and signatories on the
petition. In 36hrs almost 700 fans stopped by upset by cheating in sport and,
specifically, football's English Premier League. Quite something after a
fan set up the site merely because he wanted a place to vent.



And sportscheat.org was born. A pressure
group of fans from all over the world who want to see cheats and their teams
punished retroactively with 5-match bans and 3-point deductions based on video
evidence. This would clean up the game without needing more officials on the
field as it would take the incentive out of cheating.



The site says it doesn't see any difference between a player diving to get a
penalty and goal and the referee match-fixing scandal in Italy.



"In both cases the outcomes of games are affected. In both cases the
successful parties gain points and benefit financially. In the Italian case
points were deducted by a tribunal. Is there no way to apply those laws more
broadly?"



The site founder says that although the site is targetting football initially
he would like all sports fans to get involved at the site: "there is no
reason that any fan, just like me, couldn't expand the campaign to include
cricket, baseball or American Football".



The FA has been very forthcoming and is already in communication with fans at
sportscheat.org. The latest letter to the FA calls for them:



    "TO STAND PUBLICLY AND BERATE THESE CHEATS BY NAME.
That would be a great step forward."



The fans at sportscheat realise that FIFA's next meetingabout rule changes may
be to soon for them to crete and implement new rules but believe a "Name
and Shame" campaign against cheats by the FA and media in the interim
will hurt their pockets enough through lower sponsorships to start changing on
pitch behaviour.



While they wait for the FA to respond sportscheat.org
have started their own "Name and Shame" campaign. "It was
a painful experience," says the founder, a life long Tottenham Hotspur
fan. "The site has to be, and be seen to be, non-partisan so one of the
first five players named was Didier Zokora of Tottenham Hotspur along with
Christano Ronaldo of Manchester United and Didier Drogba of Chelsea."



The amazing thing, apparently, is the willingness of fans to name and shame
cheats within their own teams when they realise that fans from the opposing
teams are doing the same. What football fans want, even more than their team to
win apparently, is to see a great game of football.



The transcript of the letter to the FA is at



    http://sportscheat.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/20070215-sportscheatorg-letter-to-the-fa-03/



and their website is



    http://www.sportscheat.org



When asked how fans could help the founder said "we want fans, first of
all to sign the petition, then we ask them to spend 5 minutes a day or 5
minutes a week to send a quick letter to the FA, FIFA, the news media, sponsors
or their club. For people without much time we have the addresses there and
cut-and-paste form letters so sending an email becomes a matter of a few clicks
of the mouse."