FIFA to consider adding officials

JOHANNESBURG — The Associated PressPublished on Monday, Nov. 30, 2009 10:28AM EST

FIFA will consider having extra match officials on the field to help referees at next year's World Cup in South Africa.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter says Thierry Henry's hand ball, which led to the goal that sent France to the World Cup at the expense of Ireland, showed that referees needed more help on the field.

The FIFA executive committee will hold an emergency meeting in Cape Town on Wednesday, two days ahead of the draw for the World Cup, to discuss whether to recommend extra match officials.

If they agree, the proposal will go before football's rule-making International Board in Zurich in March for a final decision.

Blatter was speaking Monday at the opening of the Soccerex business conference in Johannesburg.

“There is a lack of discipline and respect in the game by the players because they are cheating,” Blatter said.

“This is human beings trying to get an advantage and this is not good and we have to fight against that. We have only one man on the field of play who shall intervene in this matter. He has two assistants for the time being, perhaps more in the future. He has to make an immediate decision. He has only two eyes. So match control is now is on the agenda. How shall we avoid such situations as we have seen in this very specific match?”

Henry's clear hand ball, first with his arm and then with his left hand, stopped the ball from going out of play before he crossed to teammate William Gallas to score an equalizer for a 1-1 draw with Ireland at Stade de France. That remained the score and France, which had won 1-0 in Dublin, qualified 2-1 on aggregate.

Blatter said the Irish were unhappy to go out of the competition in that way and had written to FIFA to be allowed into the competition as a 33rd team. That will also be discussed at the executive committee meeting on Wednesday.

Because of the clamour for FIFA to take action to help the match officials, the debate is likely to be between using TV technology or extra referees.

As an experiment in the Europa League, UEFA uses five officials, one standing at each end of the field, to help the referee settle disputes in the area, including whether the ball has crossed the line.

Blatter said he was not in favour of using TV technology to settle such disputes.

“With technology, you have to stop a match. You have a look at cameras,” he said. “Now I think there should be some additional (assistants), if they can see or not see.

“We have to maintain the human face of football and not go into technology. I think that goal-line technology, when accurate, we can accept it in international football.”

Blatter said this year's World Cup playoffs led to several disputes which would be discussed at the executive committee meeting. There was concern that such playoffs, where one team gets an advantage of playing the second legs at home, are unfair.

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For boys, sugar and spice aren't nice : It's time to accept that males and females don't necessarily have the same learning patterns

Lysiane Gagnon
Globeandmail.com

The Toronto District School Board is contemplating establishing a boys-only public elementary school. This wouldn't be a panacea, but anything that could help reduce the alarming dropout rate among boys – an acute problem in Quebec – is worth trying.

It's a well-researched phenomenon: Boys tend to underachieve in school, while a higher proportion of girls successfully make their way to university. (Female students are a now majority in most faculties.) And this might have to do, at least in part, with the fact our schools are made for girls.

Parents of boys have been complaining for a long time about the way their sons are treated within the school system. Most teachers are female and quite naturally they choose books that interest girls. “My son has been fed a regular diet of novels about emotions and relationships, instead of books dealing with sport and action,” says a colleague of mine. Boys are expected to behave like girls: They shouldn't yell, they shouldn't jostle, they should sit still in class. Moreover, they should express their emotions verbally, a mode of communication that comes naturally to girls but with which many boys are not at ease. And, of course, in this overly female world, there are too few male role models for boys who don't have one at home.

True, elementary schools and, albeit to a lesser degree, secondary schools, have always been run by women, at least in Canada. (This might have to do with the low salaries paid at these levels). But two things have changed since the olden days when nobody talked about boys' difficulties in school.

One is that the divorce rate went up, and that a far larger number of families are headed by single women. The father, the male figure, remains the symbol of authority that boys need. (Yes, of course, there are exceptions, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who were raised by single mothers, but when analyzing a widespread social phenomenon, it's better to focus on the average cases rather than the glorious exceptions).

The second change is in the marketplace. There was a time, not so long ago, when a boy without much education could land a well-paid, unionized job in the natural resource sector or in a factory. Now the jobs available to undereducated kids are in the service sector – whether in sales or in the lower echelons of health services – and these jobs are more attractive to women than men.

My elementary school, a small private institution run by nuns, was co-ed until Grade 5, when the nuns stopped accepting boys. We were delighted to be rid of the boys who had been loud, restless and constantly interrupting the teacher in class. The most unruly one was Jean Nadeau, a dark and handsome boy, who had cruelly insulted me when, as I paraded in a school play as the Virgin Mary wearing a lovely white veil fastened by a gold headband, he told his giggling friends that I looked like “an Arab sheik.” Good riddance, Jean – and his ilk were gone.

A couple of years later, I would have been happy to be in the same classroom with cute boys like Jean Nadeau, but at the age of 10, we girls loved our same-sex environment. The class was a quiet haven. We would pursue our hobbies in peace – making plastic bracelets, crocheting doilies, drawing beautiful pictures – and we had the whole yard to ourselves so we could form small groups and chat and gossip and talk about the other girls with our best friends. The teachers were relieved, too. The only one who missed the boys was Sister St-Mathias, who was a tomboy and liked to play ball games with the boys.

Maybe it's time to accept the idea that males and females don't necessarily have the same learning patterns and that some of the most vulnerable boys would make more progress in a “boy-friendly” environment.

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Premier confirms regular season game will be played in Moncton next year

 

By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff

 

It's not just talk anymore, it's official.
The Canadian Football League will hold one of next year's regular season games at the City of Moncton's Stade Moncton 2010 Stadium on the Université de Moncton campus.
Premier Shawn Graham and Moncton East MLA Chris Collins confirmed yesterday that a contract was indeed signed with the CFL last week, although they said which teams will play, the precise date, and the terms of the contract are all details that will only come when a formal announcement is made.
That should come in the next couple of weeks, when all involved can gather in Moncton.
What is known is the deal comes about largely because the provincial and federal governments have agreed to a plan that will see the 10,000-seat stadium being built to host the IAAF Moncton World Junior Track and Field Championships double its capacity to 20,000 for the game.
As for the game itself, "it's going to be the event of the fall," the premier promised. "It's truly going to position Moncton as the entertainment centre of Atlantic Canada."
He expressed confidence that the same enthusiasm for football seen in western Canada will build here on the east coast, with Moncton's central location making the game a regional event.
The regional benefits of the event is what got the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency involved.
"I feel the vision of Peter MacKay (the minister responsible for ACOA) was exemplary," the premier said late yesterday. "I want to give credit where credit is due. He and I had many phone calls on this."
With talk already circulating about building a whole weekend of events around the game, Collins, the provincial government's lead on the file, said the fact that the game would be televised "will be terrific for Moncton's profile, with 20,000 people in a brand new, full stadium."
And relatively speaking, it will be happening shortly after the city hosts the world -- and the international media -- in the same stadium for the IAAF World Junior Track and Field Championships next July. "We'll be reminding people from across Canada that Moncton is a centre for hosting large events," he said. "It's great for football, and it's great for Moncton."
As for the long-discussed idea of making the game an annual event, or even bringing a franchise to the city some day, "this is the ultimate test market," Collins said. "After a multi-year contract, who knows?"
In the meantime, he credited the league's governors for the vision in their decision. By deciding to play a regular season game and possibly more here in Atlantic Canada, "this positions the CFL as the only professional sports league in the country that is truly coast to coast."
He also took on the naysayers who argue football is not enough a part of the culture here for long-term CFL success. He said that's just not so, especially in Metro Moncton, but also in the region at large. Noting how more of the men of his generation who grew up in Moncton played in the CFL than the NHL, Collins noted organized football has a long history in the community.
Moncton Mayor George LeBlanc welcomed the news from the province yesterday.
"We've been working on this for a long time," he said. Indeed, it was five-and-a-half years ago that Moncton North MLA Mike Murphy began championing the idea of the CFL in Moncton.
While the talk from the city hosting a franchise has been refined into a one-step-at-a-time pursuit of hosting other city's teams for games for now, the talk of professional football in Moncton has continued through changes of CFL commissioners, of provincial governments, and City of Moncton administrations. (It should be noted there were even discussions of a CFL franchise during the mayoralty of George Rideout in the 1980s).
The differences between the Moncton of the 1980s and the Metro Moncton of today are obvious, but there's also been one huge difference between the time of Mike Murphy's initial musings and today.
That's the City of Moncton's soon-to-be-completed stadium, which was just a blurry line pencilled in the city's capital works projections back in 2004. Now thanks to the city's landing of the 2010 track and field championships, that little line has grown into a reality much bigger.
While the 2010 IAAF games will be a massive event for southeastern New Brunswick in every way, filling the stadium for a CFL game some weeks later will mark the beginning of what comes after for the life of the stadium. With the ability to expand the stadium to 20,000 seats for everything from a football game to a big name concert to even a Billy Graham Crusade, the stadium is poised to become a key stop for events of all kinds.
Asked if he had any doubt a CFL regular season game could fill the stadium with 20,000 smiling people, Mayor LeBlanc expressed confidence in the city's ability to draw from the whole region. He also promised, "one of those smiling people will be me."
Chris Collins said because there are maximums in the league's ticket pricing structure, he expects the game, "will be very affordable for the whole family."
Collins, whose riding includes the stadium, says he's been taking part in the pursuit of the CFL since the site of the stadium was in the ward he served as a Moncton city councillor. After all these years, he pronounced himself ecstatic at the news.
"Mike Murphy started with this idea, did a lateral when he got busy with his cabinet portfolios, and we ran with it. Now, touchdown! Here we go."