City Fan & Musician Roy Harper Has His Say

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Vital Manchester City regular, Roy Harper has kindly agreed to send us a monthly blog. In the first of many, Roy shares his thoughts over the SWP - Delap affair.

Roys says...

When I was younger, we used to use a cliché, 'Jobsworth', to denote and describe petty members of the establishment whose first line was usually prefaced with 'It's More than My job's worth to.... '. For a long time I've classified the refereeing establishment as 'Jobsworths'.

To give SWP the same punishment as Rory Delap was ridiculous. SWP is a born soldier. If you delivered him a mortal blow on a battlefield he'd come up with one last response.

If, when Delap drove the ball into his guts, he'd rolled over in the continental manner; he'd have walked away exonerated. In other words, he chose not to act out. He chose to be natural, and he showed restraint. For this simple honesty he is banned for three games. What a travesty. An obvious and real injustice.

Jimmy Page & Roy Harper - Hangman


So what the refereeing establishment is now telling us is that if you act out, you will go un-punished, but if you don't the likelihood is that you will find yourself without the amount of protection that you deserve. Absolute rubbish.

So we have to be without one of our best players for the best part of a month because the 'Jobsworths' at the FA need to stick to the letter of a law that is intended to punish bodily harm being inflicted.

The letter of a law that in its present interpretation, and dispensation, rewards dishonesty. That's reminiscent of the medieval.

We had 'The Ducking Stool' back then, and even though it was 'You were probably innocent if you drowned, and guilty if you didn't', so you were drowned anyway, there were people who did survive. Shawn didn't.

Did the punishment fit the crime? Emphatically NO. Was that obvious to everyone? Emphatically YES. We continue to abide by the rules of fools. Will anything ever change? The FA.. The sweet FA...