Injustice of those damned spot kicks

AS Eric Cantona might say if he was around: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le football". Since there is nothing about football generally that could be considered remotely magnificent at the moment, and certainly not by Eric, he would be referring to an aspect of the actual playing of the game; the taking of penalty kicks to decide the outcome of a Cup tie.

It cannot be denied that the double ration of penalty shoot-outs we saw on Sportsnight last week was magnificent television, full of drama, suspense and, in the case of Chris Waddle and Sheffield Wednesday, torment of the most riveting kind. The way it unfolded, a casual viewer could be forgiven for suspecting it had been scripted by experts and directed by a master. But you knew it was real life - an actor would have made a far better job of the penalty.

For those unfortunate not to have been fastened to the screen, the scenario is that since he missed a penalty in England's calamitous World Cup shoot- out in 1990, Waddle has shunned the penalty spot like it was a land-mine. He's saved his best body-swerves to avoid even treading on it. He was, therefore, not among the five nominated to take Wednesday's penalty ration when their tie at Wolves ended in a draw after extra-time.

When his colleagues had scored three penalties before Wolves had scored one he would have been on the edge of delight. Nobody could have imagined what was to happened next. His team-mates astonishingly missed the next two while Wolves scored from the next three. It was 3-3 and we were now into the sudden-death stage. First miss loses the game. Waddle had to face the unfaceable.

There is not enough money in all the vaults of television to buy a moment like that. It has to fall into your lap, and all praise to the BBC for so quickly catching on. The watching millions all knew that Waddle had to volunteer for the first extra kick. He knew he had to accept the responsibility as the senior and most seasoned player in the team - and the men behind the cameras knew it and proceeded to capture every drop of a drama heightened by the additional fact that we all knew he was going to miss it.

That dread appeared to drag at his spirit on the walk from centre circle to penalty spot. His shot flew towards the goalkeeper's left hand with all the velocity of a beachball. Wednesday were out of the Cup at an inestimable cost, and Waddle is forever cursed as the culprit. Yet, if there had been a pistol loaded with one round in the Sheffield dressing-room afterwards, Waddle would not have been entitled to first claim on it, nor even second.

Mark Bright had two great chances to win the match in extra-time. Chris Bart-Williams missed a penalty in the first game and the replay. Both were more deserving of being saddled with the blame than Waddle, who merely fell victim to a set of circumstances that provided great excitement. But was it football?

Television wouldn't recognise the distinction and why should it? The medium is in the thrill business and there is nothing as thrilling as watching real people succeed or fail under tense and fascinating circumstances. Sport is the most consistent and genuine provider of this fateful actuality as two other instances proved last week.

England's pathetic collapse in the last innings of the Test series was summed up by the expressive camera shot of Mike Atherton angrily swatting a chair with his bat as he walked off the Perth pitch. It might have earned him another fine had he done it in full view but television sneaked us this delicious look of private and understandable frustration.

Those with the stamina to stay up to watch the snooker on Wednesday night would have seen how John Parrott allowed the upstart Ronnie O'Sullivan to win the clinching frame of their second-round match by botching an easy blue. The ability to look a complete prat accompanies every sports star, however great and they have to accept it as part of a life that brings them fortune and fame or they don't get any sympathy from us.

But what happened to Atherton and Parrott did so in the normal course of their particular games. What befell Waddle occurred in a contrivance that does not produce a fair result. Over the past 10 years it has been the subject of great controversy and, if I have read the mood correctly, is deemed unsatisfactory by the vast majority of football fans. Neither are Fifa happy with shoot-outs. Although they continue to use penalty deciders, they are actively experimenting with other methods of settling drawn ties and must be urged to maintain their search.

Last year's World Cup final was settled by this device - bringing eternal and undeserved shame on Italy's Roberto Baggio - and I suspect it will insinuate its way permanently into the game, staining great careers on its way. Television, the biggest paymaster, is certainly not clamouring for an alternative.

Exciting as they might have been to the neutrals on Wednesday, penalties are a distortion when it comes to identifying the just winner of a football match, and we mustn't allow them to become an accepted part of football's furniture.

WEDNESDAY'S crowd eruption at Stamford Bridge did not come as a massive surprise except to professional hand-wringers, politicians short of a bandwagon and anyone naive enough to think that compulsory seating was the panacea to all hooligan problems.

Thankfully, the police had not dropped their guard, otherwise there would have been a disastrous situation. The portents were plain enough to cause regular matchgoers to take the precaution of parking their cars far away from the stadium. Had they known that Chelsea were to have at least two genuine penalty claims turned down and were going to lose to Millwall in a shoot-out they would have probably stayed at home.

The reduction in hooliganism has been a blessing but it was a mistake to relax and place total faith in all-seater grounds to ensure it didn't flare up again. You can lead a yob to a seat but you can't make him sit.

At that same stadium not too long ago, Chelsea's chairman Ken Bates advocated electrifying the fence around the pitch. The suggestion wasn't put into practice but at the time many of us thought it wasn't too outrageous a deterrent. To have moved from that proposed barrier to nothing in just a few years was hardly prudent. Chelsea cannot be blamed for complying with football's easing of crowd control, but the club and the game should be having an urgent re-think.

Whether by fence or by moat we have to separate the action from the activated. Recent events have proved that there is nothing to be gained from allowing easy access between crowd and pitch - apart, that is, from a death or two.

IT was unfortunate for Dennis Wise that his trial for assault took place before that of the four paratroopers last week. He might have been able to borrow some of their mitigation. It was said that they were trained to be aggressive, part of a fighting unit permanently poised on the razor edge of violent reaction. Wise, the court should have been told, used to play for Wimbledon.