No Draw

I see today the Football League are considering scrapping draws, in favour of extra time and/or penalties. (Comments here and here). No doubt more penalty shoot-outs will result in a lot of people saying games are decided by lottery, even though that's not true (whereas this is).

Personally, I don't want to see draws scrapped. I'm pretty happy as things are, even if you sometimes see one team park the bus and earn a frustrating 0-0 draw. (One might also think it would threaten the pools, but I guess they can work fine simply counting the score at 90 minutes, before ET/penalties).

Still, I'm happy for the League to be considering possibilities. I don't think we should blindly accept the status quo if the game could be improved - thus I'd also whole-heartedly support at least the consideration of video replays. As regards making the game a bit more interesting, at least in extra time, I've long thought it might be a good idea to take the penalties before extra time, but only apply the result if still drawn after it. That would certainly give one team plenty of incentive to attack during the added period...

This update makes clear the plan is simply to have a shootout to determine who gets an extra point. That seems less crazy, and would have the incidental benefit that there would always be three points awarded each game, which may make it slightly easier to predict or compare points totals.