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When a football incident that doesn’t involve violence or sex gets discussed on the Today programme and Question Time, you know that it is one of “those” issues. Should Roy Carroll have admitted to the ref that the ball crossed the line?<br /><br />For the background story you can go here (<a href=”http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1384274,00.html”>guardian</a>), or here (<a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/4143131.stm”>bbc</a>).<br /><br />The best point I heard was that if your boss was Alex Ferguson, you wouldn’t start admitting to stuff like that either.<br /><br />But on a more philosophical level, players should let referees and linesmen do their job. There is lots of whining about sportmanship, and comparing football to snooker and golf (nice sports apparently where people admit mistakes), and complaining that batsmen rarely walk in cricket (it’s just not cricket). But players calling the decisions and “owning up” is actually no different from claiming a penalty which isn’t there, or diving. It might be honourable or good, but you are still doing the ref’s job for him. You can’t depend on a goalkeeper to go against his instinct and not claw the ball out. Carroll looked pretty bemused by the whole thing anyway.<br />