I for one, am sick of seeing footballers go down as if they've been shot, only for them to miraculously "become fine" again after a liberal dousing of the magic sponge and several shouts from opposing fans of "bury him" or "roll him off". My idea would be for the magical "Tilty Pitch" (copyright MCM [Matt, Carlos and Martin] Ind.) to swiftly elevate and remove said faking miscreant from the playing area and allow the game to resume. This is not only an efficient time saving device, but also an ideal deterrent for timewasters, actors and frauds (are you listening Maradona?).

Design specs are sketchy (all our ideas are at best sketchy, at worst skeptical and more often than not bizarrely stupid) but we feel that the "hinged goal line with halfway line opening" would probably work best. Player goes down in a heap after an inoccuous challenge from a lightweight midfielder. Referee waves away the requests from the trainer for permission to enter the field of play (as thems the rules) and points him towards the relevant end of the pitch where said player will be deposited. A PA announcement says "Would all non injured players please HANG ON" at which everyone grabs the pitch and digs their studs in. Up flips the relevant end and drops the injured party gently off the playing area. Pitch drops back into place and play resumes.

Alternatively, the mechanism could be cranked up for extra flavour, and a vote taken whether or not the injury is genuine. If not, the spring is over-tightened, with the result that the pitch flips up at an alarming rate and the injury faking loser launched out of the ground, onto the closest motorway where he is crushed to death by juggernauts and his remains eaten by rampaging eels.

We watch some crap football, can you tell?
-- Carlos the Jackal, Nov 07 2001

I'd pay to see gladiator sport. At least with wild beast maulings you can tell when the athletes are actually injured.
-- prometheus, Nov 07 2001


We had a futher thought. Instead of the whole pitch tilting, we could install some of those hydraulic ram lifts, like in Robot Wars, that just pop up randomly at high speed. It would add a new flavour to any number of team sports. I'd pay extra at the turnstile for the possibility of a player being catapulted off the pitch. For extra flavour there could be point scoring zones within the crowd. 1 extra point for hitting the front row, but a massive 20 points for hitting row Z. Quality.
-- Carlos the Jackal, Nov 08 2001


[PeterSealy] I am guilty of the same misreading.
Reminds me of a short story: Contentious football match in some South American country - On a signal, after the ref has made a particularly partisan decision, 50,000 spectators hold up their programmes (printed on expensive silvery paper) and reflect the sun onto the ref, vaporising him intstantly...
-- hippo, Nov 08 2001


Tilty pitches? Baked at Easter Road, Fir Hill and Tannadice. Though they are permanently tilted.
-- mcscotland, Mar 24 2002


It'd be nice to see the eels showing how to writhe properly.
-- thumbwax, Mar 24 2002


Maybe the pitch could tilt slightly against the team that's winning, and keep tilting the more goals they score. And a huge fan at the other end blowing against them. And the other team are allowed to hit them...sounds like England v Argentina.
-- git, Jun 12 2003



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