The World Cup has dominated my television screen for the last month. Or, to put it a different way, I have been watching a lot of soccer.

North Americans have traditionally looked down on those who play the “beautiful game” because of the on-field antics of the players. Quite simply, they seem like a bunch of wimps.

Yes, I understand that it can be painful to be spiked by soccer cleats from someone running at high speed. And soccer players (footballers) don’t wear the same amount of protective gear that participants in many other sports do.

Still, it seems suspicious that someone writhing on the ground in agony can just jump up with smiles a few seconds later. Do all players go to the same acting school? Why should we believe them when they go down at the slightest touch?

Canadians are used to athletes playing through pain. Thomas Chabot of the Ottawa Senators had a broken arm, but that didn’t keep him out of this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. He played through the pain. fans didn’t find out his arm was broken until after the team was eliminated.

Most famously, Bobby Baun scored the Stanley Cup winning goal in 1964 while playing with a broken ankle. Ever seen a soccer player do that?

I have quickly become tired of what appears to be pure acting by footballers in the hopes of a penalty being assessed against the other team. In hockey “diving’ is a penalty. In football (soccer0 it is tradition.

I was socked therefore when one of Belgium’s top strikers was called for his acting and given a yellow card in the team’s quarter final match with Argentina. He had already earned a yellow card for a bad tackle earlier in the game. The second one meant he was out of action and his team had to play a man short for the duration. Ihe situation left me with mixed feelings.

It was nice to finally see a referee call this sort of unsportsmanlike behaviour. The Belgian player hadn’t been touched by the Argentinian, but he went down as if he had been gored by a bull. He deserved the penalty and its consequences, which quite possibly cost his team the game and eliminated them from World Cup contention..

But why call the penalty then? Was it a more blatant dive than in other games? I didn’t think so.

In Argentina\s previous match, against Egypt, there were some questionable calls that Egyptian fans feel showed a clear bias. Argentina are the defending champions – is there a bias in their favor? FIFA officials say no, but what else could tehy say?

I would just like to see some consistency and have the actors punished every time they fake injury for gain. let’s put an end to diving.