I didn't have to go back to 1971 to find one.WeeWorld wrote:I won't second guess you Captain.
Could you imagine today's players encountering the likes of Norman Hunter or Tommy Smith?
They'd give them something to fall over and writhe about and yet back in the day hardly anyone did.
In the thousands of games played back in the old First division, dives were remarkable because they were so rare.
Hence you having to go back to '71 to find one. Famous it was, the player dived, possibly...
I simply put Francis Lee into Google and looked for videos - it was one of the first to come up. I stopped looking then.
And as you should well know, there was a lot less televised footie in them thar days with most matches not being covered, or if they were, it was a single camera for the highlights only and usually not kept on file after. Back then, the FA Cup final was a massive day of TV and one of very few live matches watched on the box (BBC and ITV). The more usual fayre was Match of the Day, where you usually got highlights of 2 matches on Saturday night, and then highlights of 3 more (always with a London match as the main feature) on ITV on Sunday afternoon.
The fact that the first video I found actually had accusations of diving perhaps lends credence to the suggestion that it wasn't that uncommon ... but then it was Franny Lee, so maybe not that unusual and perhaps vindicates promenader2 and his evidence.
As for my assertion that it was in all levels of the game, I can well remember some of my primary school mates of many decades ago practicing their dives and learning how to trip themselves to try to con a free-kick or penalty from the ref.