The dismissal of Dan Ballard in the 24th minute of Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Wolves brought up a huge point for debate.
In the immediate aftermath of the game, there were a fair number of our fans who, despite having not seen the footage of the incident at the point, seemed to be of the opinion of “fair enough” as to whether Ballard should’ve been dismissed.
There were even those that criticised a player that’s been the lynchpin of our defence for much of this season, yet wasn’t until later when some
of the national pundits analysed the footage and were largely of the opinion that although the referee had behaved correctly in executing the law of the game regarding a hair pull, the law itself — to put it bluntly — was an ass.
For anyone that hasn’t seen the footage of our centre back’s tug’ on Tolu Arokodare’s hair, it was a slight pull, with Ballard keeping his eyes on the ball at the time. Yet the Wolves player, who’s been involved in two of the three in total hair-pull sending offs this season, went down like he’d been shot in the back, immediately screaming to the referee that his hair had been tugged.
There’s no doubt that he felt something and he knew what it was — and also he knew what the consequences would be for Ballard if the referee took a look at it. For the slightest pull of his hair, he was looking to get a man sent off, and he succeeded.
As it stands, a hair pull (no matter how slight), is classed as ‘violent conduct’.
Therefore, any player who has long hair has to be treated differently by an opponent who has to be careful to keep his hands away from their locks, or at least that’s what it feels like in the wake of such a bizarre dismissal.
There have been a couple of sensible suggestions from fans as to how to tackle the problem which a change in the law has created — the first of which is that all players with long hair should now wear hair nets.
If I was Ballard, I would have ninety minutes of uninterrupted fun, endlessly twanging Arokodare’s hair net just to see if he would be able to convince any referee or watching camera by going down and rolling around that he just had an insufferable amount of pain inflicted on him.
At the moment, a physical battle between a defender and a striker is considered an acceptable part of the game and one in which we’ve been used to enjoying, witnessing not just Ballard but also Brian Brobbey taking part in every week — either through grappling with an opponent or pushing in and using their own physicality, and it’s not unusual to see Ballard linking arms with not one but two opponents when going up for corners.
Referees let a lot of this go, accepting it as part of the game, but if a player accidentally pulls his opponent’s hair, it’s classed as a sending-off offence.
Instead of making changes such as bringing in hair nets to accommodate the law, they could simply change the law itself, so that it’s not classed as ‘violent conduct’ and punishable at most by a booking.
