lol, the polar opinions are generally anyone not from the red side of Liverpool, stupidly obvious red card, red side of liverpool..... something about momentum that causes an off the ground, studs in contact half way up someone's shin completely fine
Diving can be hard, but can be pretty obvious, that's the thing, punish the obvious ones, that will be enough and will put off people trying it.
When there is nothing to really discourage people doing it, they'll try it on, when SOME people are being punished, the risk becomes vastly higher and people will either not do it, or do it less often.
This is the thing that I've said before would be great about ref's getting replay's, within probably 2 games of video replays being introduced we'd have people stop pulling shirts in the box, stopping diving, stopping most of the crap they get up to because they'll be caught, easily. You get a few games where the ref spends a bit of time on the sideline, so what, when people realise the punishment and STOP cheating, there will be less incidents which need video replays to work out. It would likely fix 90% of diving, cheating and game changing incorrect decisions within a couple of weeks.
ANyway I've always found that 99% of dives can simply be caught by, errm, general physics, when someone has both legs chopped out from under him say, its VERY rare if not impossible for that player to then gain height by jumping. When its a dive and someone often jumps........ its a dive.
The Suarez/Kompany one, why did he start spinning, why is he already asking for the freekick on the way down. Gerrard tends to be obvious as he seemingly always has time to do an impression of a starfish before hitting tucking back in and hitting the ground fairly safely.
Larrson at the weekend, there was minor contact but the dive was obvious because he jumped and went up before going down, and it was far too, controlled.
