IT is part of football some say, but nevertheless it’s always a bitter pill to swallow when things happen to a team you support.

It’s the dragons of fair play that come into motion when one sees professional football players like Crouch who need to pull hair of another player to make his own goals.

Players like that, in my view, fall in the category of hidden dragons rather than Crouching tiger.

Nothing to be said about the second goal, but without Crouch’s first goal, the second would not have happened, at least not the way it did.

Being in Germany during these games, I have to admire the way everything is organised to German standards, even quite nicely done; and then to hear that the British have to come Germany of all places to show the world how they cheat themselves to a next round, it just saddens the whole event.

If it isn’t the English supporters who come and wreck the place then it is the players themselves that have to come and stir up the place with cheating on the field.

One would tend to wonder what would have happened if it were a Trinidad player who pulled the Englishman’s hair.

Maybe it is time, once again, to review the tasks of the fourth element in the judging field, the fourth referee.

When the Laws of the Game were amended to incorporate a fourth official in 1991, his original function was to take over if the referee or one of his assistants were unable to continue.

Over time however, football’s newest personality has been gradually assuming more and more responsibility, but apart from conspicuous tasks like overseeing substitutions and keeping order on the benches, very little is known about his role.

With a fourth man being available, the invention of something called “a camera” and the use of a review button on a simple VCR, could maybe make these kinds of mishaps avoidable altogether.

The game will be able to change, with the help of technology, but only in a positive way.

Keeping technology away from sports sounds as silly as saying that we should not install ABS brakes or air bags in cars as the technology might interfere with the normal injuries that reporters like to take pictures of.

Even if we had to install a fifth referee, it could not be too much in a game where so much money changes hands and where so many people are affected by a split second wrong judgement?

I cannot see any serious lobbying against wanting fair play being able to win it from the rest of the world who would like to see a game played in the fairest circumstances possible in today’s world.

I thought we had learned from the Maradona’s hand of God in 1986, it is a very pity that we now have to witness the hair-Crouching fingers in 2006!

What was to be now can now not be any more.

The world has progressed to accept technology, why is the sport of football not able to catch up with the rest of the world?

Cricket has accepted technology’s role, as has American football. So why can’t we face our hidden dragons?