Blue cards could be introduced to professional football, adding the use of a 10-minute sin bin for offending players. Here's the thoughts of Michael Golding who has to manage in a league where its already in use.
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00:00 Now a big topic of discussion today has been the proposed introduction of blue cards to football.
00:06 The idea is that referees across the game will have the option of holding up a third card
00:10 which places the offending player in the technical area for 10 minutes. Now,
00:14 sin bins have already been in place at grassroots football level such as in the
00:18 Southern Counties East League where many clubs across Kent including Corinthian FC play.
00:23 I caught up with their manager Michael Golding to see what he thinks of the blue card proposal
00:28 but I started by congratulating him on reaching 400 games with the Longfield Club.
00:32 Yeah, no delighted obviously it's a club that I hold close to my heart. It's a family-orientated
00:39 club and I've been there now for well over 10 years as a player, as a reserve team manager,
00:44 as a youth team manager and obviously taking on the first team responsibility and it's brought me
00:50 lots and lots of joy over the years. There's been so many hires, met lots and lots of good people
00:54 through football. There's been the obvious lows as well but yeah, in terms of a personal accolade
01:00 it's never been about me but to go or to get to 400 games is really pleasing.
01:06 No, absolutely it's such an achievement. Now, let's talk about what we've really brought you
01:09 on here for today, blue cards. It's this idea of introducing a sin bin style concept with the
01:15 referee holding up a blue card that's in between a sort of yellow and a red card. Now, the idea of
01:20 sin bins has already been implemented in grassroots football which is obviously where you work with
01:26 Corinthian. What's it been like from the ground because it's only been there for a couple of years?
01:30 Yeah, so we had experience of it in our first or in our last year in the scaffold before we got
01:35 promoted. I'm not a huge fan of it in terms of what I would call the football pyramid. I think
01:44 it almost devalues what we're trying to do in terms of Sunday league and youth team football.
01:50 I can see it has a place and whether that's going to work in the professional game obviously
01:54 remains to be seen but I think that the referees and the officials need assistance and they need
01:58 a tool to help them to stop the scenes that we all see on TV and when we're at games on a Saturday
02:03 of players screaming and shouting and running and getting in the officials' faces. I think that
02:06 needs to be addressed. They tried to do it years ago in terms of if there was descent they would
02:12 move the free kick forward 10 yards and that obviously petered out. So, I think they're
02:15 trying to find the right thing to do. Whether that is blue cards in a professional setting,
02:20 I'm not entirely sure. It's really interesting because it feels like everybody's got an opinion
02:24 on this today. It's going to be making the headlines all day. One of the ones that I
02:28 found quite interesting is that some are concerned about the safety of players.
02:31 If they're having to step off the pitch for a bit, if it's a cold day, they could end up
02:35 getting cramp. Have you found that at all or is it a case of just continuing running on the sidelines?
02:39 Yeah, the players are allowed to move on the sideline. We've been fortunate,
02:44 touch wood, that we've only had one or two in the couple of years that we've had this.
02:47 But the directive from the league is that the players are allowed to be moving up and down
02:52 the touchline within reason. They don't have to be confined to sitting on the bench. The idea is
02:58 that obviously as a management team and with our physio, we'd work together to make sure that that
03:01 player's match ready to go into it. I think when you look at other sports as well, triathlon had
03:07 a similar punishment for not sorting the transitions out properly of people standing
03:12 still and they came away from that quite quickly because for the biomechanics and the body working,
03:17 having that break of 10 minutes of complete stop or however long the sim would be,
03:21 it didn't work in triathlon. And again, I wonder whether the science behind it might actually lead
03:25 to it being not the right thing. Well, it does sound very interesting. We'll have to see what
03:30 happens if it does eventually get implemented and what that means for the whole pyramid of football.
03:36 Best of luck this weekend. You've got a game on with Birsted, against Birsted. A chance to go top
03:41 of the table if all goes well and with other fixtures. So I'll leave you to it. Best of luck
03:46 this weekend. Thank you very much for joining us.