Darrell Hair overshadowed?

[Samuel_Vimes]

I'm sure we all remember Ovalgate with great fondness...anyway, it's just had its football equivalent today.

Denmark hosted Sweden in a vital Euro qualifier, with Denmark pretty much needing a win to stay in the hunt with Sweden, Spain and Northern Ireland (hush). After going down 0-3 in the opening 25 minutes, Denmark fought back excellently (watched the whole match, definitely sided with Denmark - they were playing good football and deserved at least a point). Anyway, Denmark got back to 3-3, pushed forward, open game, both sides hunting the fourth...

Then out of the blue Poulsen (Denmark) punches Rosenberg (Sweden striker) in the stomach, Rosenberg goes down, nobody except linesman notices until the ref blows his whistle for an injury in the box. Linesman's seen the incident though, and notifies the ref, who goes over for a quick chat before returning with the red card to Poulsen and a penalty to Sweden.

Then a cracking night of football falls to pieces. One Danish spectator goes mad, runs onto pitch and attempts to assault the referee (who is saved by Danish defender Gravgaard, who went between).

The referee points to the tunnel and orders the players to walk off, and after an Oval-style 10-minute rumination (at least UEFA are quicker than ICC to sort things out), Sweden are declared 3-0 winners, at least according to the scoreboard.

Now it seems like there's going to be a disciplinary hearing. (For slightly more neutral news, see UEFA and BBC)

Anyway, is it justified to walk off? I thought it was a bit of an overreaction - there was about four minutes left to play, it was just one nutter, the only reason I can see was that the referee thought there was a personal threat to himself - but this doesn't really increase with one guy running onto the pitch (let's face it, this happens all the time).

Very, very strange.

[Johnners]

Sooooo they decided to punish Demark because of 1 nutter supporter???...strange indeed, has this sort of thing happened before?

[BoyBrumby]

The Viking blood still flows through you Scandinavians, eh?

It's a tough one, personally I think when officials are physically attacked that's it, we might as well abandon sport & just have a fight, so I do have some sympathy with the ref's stance here. However, given he wasn't actually attacked common sense would suggest that, given that state of the game & that passions were running high (that Norse blood again), the penalty should have been taken & the game played to its natural conclusion.

[Fiery]

Originally Posted by Clapo

Sooooo they decided to punish Demark because of 1 nutter supporter???...strange indeed, has this sort of thing happened before?

Pieter van Zyl

[Matteh]

Haha worst guy. Up there with Steve Bartman.