IBL wrote:
A dive should be categorised as 'there being sufficient enough contact for the player to go down', so no bullshit where the player feels the slightest of touches and decides to do a swanny.
As soon as you make it a normative judgement, you're inviting a world of criticism. Take Ramsey's penalty appeal against Swansea, there's no consensus even on here whether he was tripped or went down easily or was just a bit clumsy
The sufficient amount of contact is variable as well, there's a video somewhere of Christ Samba going to ground when Berbatov barely tugs at his shirt. Now, Chris Samba could withstand gale force winds if he had to but, equally Berbatov did pull him down and sought to gain an unfair advantage himself. So, do you award Blackburn a penalty and then send Samba off?
There are also times when a player stays on his feet when he'd be better off going to ground because he's being fouled. But since he stays on his feet, the referee takes the easier alternative - understandably so - but the chance has gone. All it takes is one arm across the shoulder and in that case you probably should be a little light on your feet.
There are simply too many situations to effectively deal with the problem. The occasional yellow card from the referee is the only acceptable trade off between punishing divers without being overly severe and opening a can of worms every weekend.
Possibly, if a player accumulates as many cards for diving as Bale has, then you can haul him up in front of a panel and discipline him severely but a ban for every perceived dive will not work.
