Feigning head injuries

Quoted from RichMariner

I don't think there's a simple solution to this unfortunately. You need to assume each head injury is serious, even if you're 90% sure it's play-acting. And you can't punish the team if one of their players is genuinely injured by forcing them to play either with 10 players, or a sub who will likely be thrown in cold.

The lad who got hurt in the first minute... as someone else has already said, rolling around, bashing the turf with your fist, etc, is usually a sign they're okay. The ones that go down and don't move are usually the serious injuries.

The lad who got hurt, but didn't go down because Mansfield were on the attack... the ref could have stopped the game then. Even though he hadn't gone down, he clearly had a head injury. Obviously, once Crocombe had parried the shot and we then took possession, the player went down.

It's frustrating because that second one was cynical, and then you had our fans shouting that one of our players should go down holding his head when Mansfield were on the attack. You're relying on players being professional about this.

I think the only way you deal with this is education and trust. All players need to learn about and understand the seriousness of head injuries, and not to insult those that have been injured in this way by play-acting. They are professional footballers, so they should be professional.

Time wasting is one thing. Pretending they have serious head injuries simply to stop the game to their team's advantage is more cynical in my view.

A bit of retrospective punishment would be good, too, but it's hard to prove that someone was play-acting as head injuries aren't always visible.

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

The whole thing is ridiculous. You can break both legs and both arms in a tackle and the ref potentially waves play on but somebody gives you a tap on the head and play stops.

As per usual it is the law of unintended consequences and the lawmakers never think things through.

The minute players see an opportunity to bend the rules they will take it, and an appropriate antidote to that should have been brought in with the new law.