{"id":130,"date":"2009-12-09T19:45:04","date_gmt":"2009-12-09T19:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nickbennett.co.uk\/?p=130"},"modified":"2022-12-30T17:58:56","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T17:58:56","slug":"gumshields-gumshields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/2009\/12\/09\/gumshields-gumshields\/","title":{"rendered":"Gumshields, Gumshields!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m all up for sport evolution but it needs to be in the right areas. I&#8217;m fed up with FIFA making excuses as to why we shouldn&#8217;t introduce technology into Football. Every other sport is moving quicker than Football. There have been enough comments made about the need for technology so I&#8217;m not going to waste my time. Just be very assured that I, Nick Bennett believe technology needs to be introduced into the game of Football. There&#8230;done and dusted.<\/p>\n<p>But Nick you said the game is evolving in the wrong areas? Which areas could you possibly mean? OK, Football in its grassroots used to be a working-class sport where it wasn&#8217;t uncommon to find someone had urinated in your pocket while you stood watching your favourite team. I can only imagine the relief some of our Northern brothers would have felt knowing that there was a source of warmth waiting for their hands. The players were hard back then too. You could go into a neck-high challenge and no one would bat an eyelid. I&#8217;ve seen footage of Goalies being bundled across the line, and the goal is given.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not a barbarian, so I understand it had to be &#8216;toned&#8217; down a tad. If you want to watch that sort of behaviour you can go and watch the &#8216;gentleman&#8217; play rugby. What I have a problem with (and it&#8217;s been escalating for a while) are player&#8217;s protective accessories. There&#8217;s an infamous rumour that Steven Gerrard&#8217;s Father (after traveling a distance to see his son play) got in the car and went home after spotting Stevie G wearing gloves. I like this rumour and hope it&#8217;s true. The latest fad in player pampering is gum shields! The only exception I will allow is Heurelho Gomes as his Mum has provided a note after he was bullied for his first 3 months in the Country. Mr Gallas, there is no excuse! I&#8217;m not going to make some stereotypical comment about the French introducing these footballing must haves but if I had any stats I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;d be compelling.<\/p>\n<p>What does the future hold then? I can see the footballers of tomorrow wearing the same protective garments as seen in Police Dog training centers. Yet, ironically, being more flimsy under a challenge and more accomplished at diving than Tom Daley. How can they get away with this in the future? Because we will be relying on the short-sighted man in black to make all of the decisions silly!<\/p>\n<p>p.s. Southend have lost their last 3 games so I&#8217;m sulking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m all up for sport evolution but it needs to be in the right areas. I&#8217;m fed up with FIFA making excuses as to why we shouldn&#8217;t introduce technology into Football. Every other sport is moving quicker than Football. There have been enough comments made about the need for technology so I&#8217;m not going to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26,172,177,188,195,271,425],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-accessories","tag-footballers","tag-french","tag-gloves","tag-gumshields","tag-man","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1296,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/1296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nickbennett.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}