Long running football highlights show Match of the Day announced today that it’s supplementing its famous “Goal of the month” competition with another one to find the month’s best dive ie where a player convinces the referee he’s been fouled in order to win a penalty.
“Scoring goals from open play is obviously an important part of football,” said presenter Mark Chapman today. “But increasingly so is the carefully crafted dive. It’s no easy matter to convince the ref you were genuinely trying to score when a defender cynically brought you down, especially these days when VAR should make it impossible to con match officials this way. “So we thought it was time to recognise the tremendous work done by certain individuals in this area.”
However, critics have pointed out that there can hardly be any suspense when it’s obvious Liverpool will win every month, the only question being which of their forwards spends the most time needlessly horizontal in the opposing box.
A trial run of the competition in January 2025 initially put Mohammed Salah marginally ahead of Cody Gakpo, Darwin Nuñez and Diogo Jota, until close examination of match footage revealed that on one occasion a defender genuinely did make contact with Salah, and he went down for a valid reason.
”I’d never have believed it,” said Chapman, “but if you slow the footage down, you can see it clearly. Shame - it would have been a contender for dive of the season.”
Concerns over the wilful destruction of the world’s main source of oxygen may be premature, as Rodell Clarke (43) has planted a new Forest Pansy in his front garden. Measuring 5m fully grown, Mr Clarke’s Cercis Canadensis is the perfect size to offset 477,698,000 hectares of Brazilian eco-system.
Mr. Clarke is confident that his deciduous shrub will maintain the Earth’s delicate balance of biodiversity. Also, he explained: ‘It’s striking purple foliage, turns a lovely shade of bronze in the Autumn. It’s a shade for sleeping cats during the Summer and is perfect for fairy lights in the Winter. Who needs 390 billion individual trees?’ Yes, the Amazon is home to 16,000 species, but Mr. Clarke’s tree has a garden gnome in close proximity. Some say the rainforest is nature’s medicine cabinet, responsible for two-thirds of all cancer cures, but Mr. Clarke claims his shrub is a great cure for hiccups.
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