By TERRY VENABLES
EVER since football was invented, those involved have tried everything and anything in order to get that all-important victory.
I have walked into many away dressing rooms to find the heating cranked up on warm days and not working on cold, winter ones.
Not to mention the customary lack of hot water.
But Wednesday’s shocking events at the Liberty Stadium showed that enough is enough.
The sight of Eden Hazard wrestling with football’s oldest-ever ballboy in the closing minutes of Chelsea’s Capital One Cup semi-final, second leg at Swansea was nothing short of embarrassing. It heaped shame on the English game.
In my book, both parties were in the wrong.
You cannot condone Blues star Hazard for kicking not-so-little Charlie Morgan, 17, as he attempted to get the ball back.
The Belgian might have escaped the long arm of the law but he will almost certainly be punished by his club and the FA. And rightly so. Hazard should not have got involved in the incident. It’s as simple as that.
And he would not have needed to had Master Morgan given the ball back straight away, like he was supposed to.
Instead, the son of a Swans director decided to try to be clever and waste time.
The result was pandemonium and a red card for Hazard.
But questions have to be asked of Swansea, too. Like, what was a 17-year-old doing being a ballboy?
He’s old enough to have been playing!
He is certainly old enough to know that what he was doing was wrong.
His attempt to waste time was clearly premeditated. You have only to read his Twitter account to know that.
He tweeted before the game that he was going to time-waste. Someone at the club should have picked up on that and taken preventative action.
It is all very well to paint Hazard as the villain of the piece. But you can understand his frustration.
He should not have been put into this position in the first place. No footballer should — ballboys should not be part of the game.
Hazard was fighting to try to get his team to a major cup final when he comes up against a teenager doing his best to keep the ball from him.
Now, trying to kick the ball out of his possession was out of order. But the Belgian had tried to get the ball out of his arms first — but the lad resisted. He refused to release it.
Swansea insist he was not acting under instruction.
But you have to wonder because he would not have been the first ballboy to have been told to take his time giving the ball back to the opposition.
Mind you, he might have been the first 17-year-old to have been told that!
Regardless of who is to blame, it is time clubs stopped playing silly beggars and cut out the gamesmanship — before it completely ruins the beautiful game.
It is not just ballboys taking their time to throw balls back or drying them with towels for their team’s long-throw expert — it is the players, too.
The ones only too willing to go down in the penalty area under the slightest touch in a bid to earn a penalty and get an opponent red-carded.
And the defenders who manhandle strikers at every set-piece like they are playing in the NFL.
They are all forms of gamesmanship and it is time they were stamped out.
Referees could stop the manhandling at corners and free-kicks in an instant.
They just have to award a penalty every time they see it happen.
So, for the first couple of weeks you might get a few spot-kicks in every game.
But that would soon stop as defenders came to realise every time they grappled with a striker they ran the risk of giving away a penalty.
I am sick of seeing players and clubs trying to gain half a yard by bending and breaking the rules.
The only place they should be working hard trying to gain that extra half a yard is on the training pitch.
Football needs to clean up its act. Gamesmanship is dragging it towards the gutter.
And nobody wants to see that.
