Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/643092
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2016 24 Opinion Full Colour Version C: M: Y: K: 0 0 0 100 C: M: Y: K: 0 100 100 0 C: M: Y: K: 50 100 100 20 TUNA AQUAMED MFF Ltd. - Hangar, Triq it-Trunciera, Marsaxlokk MXK1522 T: 2247 5000 E: contact@ebcon.com.mt www.mff.com.mt Farmed in Maltese offshore waters and delivered to you with special attention to freshness and to the highest standards. LOOK FOR OUR QUALITY MARK IN YOUR SUPERMARKET, FISHMONGER OR RESTAURANT FOR A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE. EAT FRESH EAT HEALTHY ENJOY OUR SEA BREAM What is AD doing on the pitch? T here is an old saying in football – attributed to player-manager Brian Clough, though this is debatable – that goes something like: "If you're not interfering with play… what are you doing on the pitch?" At its simplest level, it is a general comment about one of the more bizarre aspects of that particular game: the offside rule. I won't go into it in too much detail – otherwise we'll be here till the next World Cup – but the funny thing about the offside rule in football is that (under certain circumstances) it seems to resemble Schrodinger's cat: a player can be both 'onside' and 'offside' at the same time, without anyone seeing this as a contradiction. The rule itself is proverbially difficult to explain – though, strangely, incredibly easy to understand just by watching a few games. But it works roughly like this: your mere presence in a position in front of the last defender (at the precise instant the ball was passed… and as long as you are past the halfway line) automatically makes you offside. It doesn't necessarily follow, however, that you will be penalised for it. That decision depends largely on two factors: your actions (or lack thereof); and the referee's discretion. If the referee deems that you were not 'interfering with play'… everything is hunky dory. The game carries on. If, on the other hand, you do anything that might constitute 'interference' – e.g. receiving the pass and taking a shot at goal – then the whistle goes, and it's a free kick for the other team. Naturally, this brings us right back to the Brian Clough quote. The only position I have ever played on a football pitch is goalkeeper (which, by a curious coincidence, is also the only position in football that cannot, by definition, ever be offside). As a goalkeeper trying to keep your eye on the ball, and also on all attackers advancing towards the penalty area … the mere presence of a player in an offside position automatically 'interferes with play'. He is another man to cover. Another worry. Another possible pain in the arse. Whether or not that player does anything to interfere with play is quite immaterial, really. His position will affect your decisions as a goalkeeper… for instance, whether or not to 'run out' (as we used to say) to narrow the angle of a possible shot at goal; whether or not to stay on your line; and even then, whether to plant yourself in the middle of the goal area, or to stand closer to one goalpost or the other. You will probably guess that I wasn't very good at making any of those decisions myself (though, to give myself some credit, I did occasionally pull an unlikely reflex save out of nowhere). And like most lousy goalkeepers the game has ever seen, I always blamed the offside rule. "He was offside, ref!" "Yes, but he wasn't interfering with play." Depending on my rejoinder, it was usually either a yellow or a red card after that. But I digress… The bottom line is that Brian Clough was perfectly right. The offside rule sucks. And it sucks in all other spheres of life, too. Like politics, for instance. Political parties, too, can find themselves in a position when they are just not 'interfering with play'. Alternattiva Demokratika is a good example at the moment… though the same could have been said for the PN until just a few years ago. Let's take a look at a few recent positions taken up by Malta's only 'Green Party'. Its chairman, Prof. Arnold Cassola recently posted a Facebook status update in which he hinted – then later confirmed – that AD was opposed to embryo freezing. Like other people who have voted AD in all the elections I've ever participated in – giving them my Number 2 in all elections until 2004, and Number 1 in both 2008 and 2013 – I was a little puzzled by this. The argument against embryo freezing arises from the view (associated overwhelmingly with conservative, Christian Democrat parties like the PN) that a human ovum automatically becomes a fully-fledged human being, with all corresponding legal rights and privileges, from the precise instance of conception. I don't share that opinion myself, but I won't waste time arguing with it. It's the sort of world vision I can understand and appreciate, when it comes from people whose opinions are broadly informed by religion. And this is why I find it strange to hear it from a representative of the secular European Green movement: where opinions are most emphatically NOT informed by religion at all. Of all Europe's Green Parties, AD is the only one to oppose abortion under all circumstances. Now, it is arguably the only Green Party in Europe to argue that a newly fertilised human embryo – consisting of a single cell with a nucleus comprising the shuffled DNA of both its parents – should be considered on the same legal level as a child that has been born. To my mind, that is utterly absurd. And very dangerous, too, as the same argument is also used to uphold a perfectly unreasonable ban on emergency conception in this country ('this country', incidentally, being the one with the highest rate in Europe of teenage girls dropping out of school due to pregnancy). Is AD against the morning after pill, too? For Raphael Vassallo