Back in December there was a rather nasty incident in The Netherlands when a football linesman was kicked to death by a group of teenagers and one adult. What is interesting today is that whilst the juveniles' names I believe cannot be reported there is no such restriction on the name of the adult convicted. The Telegraph manage to report the adult as being 'Hasan D'. The BBC report names no names, why?
The Telegraph further report that:
The Telegraph further report that:
'Only three of the defendants turned up in court to hear the verdict, an attendance that described by Mrs Nieuwenhuizen as “disrespectful”. “The worst thing for me is that they never admitted what they did,” she said.'The BBC don't report this but do have this really odd passage:
'The BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague says amateur teams have since introduced a new code of conduct in the hope that such an incident will never happen again.'A code of conduct was needed to stop people kicking match officials to death? Really?
The first names are reported in the Dutch press. Also notable was the fact that the name of the team that kicked the linesman was the Buitenboys. "Buitenlander" is Dutch for foreigner. So much for integration.
ReplyDeleteYes, I thought the "new code of conduct" line was a bit strange. So I emailed Anna Holligan to ask what it meant. Here is her answer:
ReplyDeleteHello. Thank you. Various new codes of conduct at different clubs. New yellow cards for spectators at some etc etc.
The Dutch Football Association should be able to provide further information.
My information is directly from the amateur clubs I visited. Hope this helps. Regards, Anna
In other words, don't ask me I'm only the reporter.
Some media outlets name the Chief Kicker-To-Death as "Hasan D", others as "El-Hasan D". Perhaps it's not too far-fetched to surmise that he is an adherent of the Religion of Peace.