Time to sort out football’s fakers and divers

CALL me a hard-hearted old cynic, but there was something almost perversely refreshing about Wayne Rooney being struck down by the dreaded curse of the fractured metatarsal.

It had to do with that look of genuine anguish on his face the moment he felt the bone in his foot snap.

We’ve seen that expression many times in football, invariably accompanied by a squeal of pain, a deranged waving of the arms and at least half a dozen forward rolls, before the victim finally comes to a shuddering halt and lies motionless on the turf, his hands clamped around his leg in a wordless statement of intense personal distress.