Costly, cruel, ludicrous curfews

by Orville Higgins

The news came through on Thursday that Manchester City's mercurial striker Mario Balotelli has been docked a week's pay for breaking curfew. This for being out late last Friday night ahead of City's game against Bolton. The fine is reportedly about £120,000.

I have a serious difficulty with imposing curfews on grown men. Indeed, I find it preposterous that one should be telling big men what time they should go to bed!

Players have subjected themselves to this degrading exercise over the years because they are scared of losing their place on the team and all the benefits that come with it.

My position is simple. Management should be concerned not with what players do the night or nights before a game, but with their performance on the day of the match. If a player has demonstrated that he has the capacity to have a late night and still dazzle on the pitch, what's the point of having a curfew?

performance unaffected

The irony of this case involving Balotelli is that he actually scored in the Bolton game the day after he broke curfew when City won 2-0.

Surely, whatever he was doing the night before didn't affect his ability to do what he was paid to do: score goals. Were I management, and I found that my player broke curfew and then scored the next day, I would insist that he goes on the road every night before a game!

The purpose of curfews is essentially to legislate that players get their rest before the big encounter. Rest is crucial for the sportsman. I accept that, but rest is not the only thing that sportsmen need before a game. Other things, like food and water, are just as crucial to the athlete.

The footballer who doesn't eat right, or who is not properly hydrated, is just as likely to underperform as one who doesn't get enough rest. Indeed, the footballer who doesn't eat properly, and who doesn't hydrate himself well, could do more lasting damage to his body, and by extension to his career, than one who breaks the odd curfew.

Despite this, we don't create a system that punishes the player who doesn't eat properly. We don't put his food in front of him and charge him if he doesn't partake. We don't put eight pints of water in his room and fine him if he doesn't drink them. We educate the player about the importance of food and water and then LEAVE IT TO HIM to make the proper choice.

We don't monitor him and create systems to punish him if he doesn't adhere to the eating and drinking standards that are fundamental to his trade, so why don't we do the same thing with his rest?

Those of us who believe in curfews should, logically, and perhaps absurdly, insist on putting these big men around a table and insist that they eat up their veggies!

we're not all the same

Different human beings have different needs, and everybody has different factors that makes them tick. To tell grown men that they should all be in bed by 10 p.m. is to assume that they all have the same need for the same hours of sleep. That's illogical.

I can understand curfews for security reasons. If we are in unfamiliar territory, I would prefer to have my players all safe at the hotel. But this is at the hotel, not necessarily in their rooms, which is what most curfews insist on. But for a Jamaican who goes out to a friend's house in Jamaica the night before a game, for example, why should he be punished?

Most of us operate on the premise that once a player breaks curfew, he is out partying, or up to some sexual indiscretions, but that is not necessarily true. A man could be out at a late-night church service, for all we know. The man who is forced into his room against his natural bedtime may spend more time tossing and turning than actually sleeping, and may be more tired than if we had left him to his own will.

Managers must leave players alone at nights. Judge him on his performance tomorrow. If he is not performing, drop him. It's as simple as that. If he maintains a high level of performance, what he does at night should not be the manager's concern.

This £120,000 fining of Balotelli is crazy. Charging a grown man the equivalent of J$16 million, because he never went to bed when you wanted him to, is not only ridiculous, it's absolute cruelty!

Orville Higgins is the 2011 winner of the Hugh Crosskill/Raymond Sharpe Award for Sports Reporting. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.