Mark "Boffin" McGhee is a big fan of Chaos Theory........

[London Irish]

......according to his interview in the Sports Argus. At last his midfield selections are explained.

 

[John Dorian]

how can you read that trash ? or did you get it out of the trash to read it on the way to work to pass the time ?

 

[London Irish]

Not trash at all, reading Chaos Theory is quite stimulating. Not as racy as Stephen Hawking, I'll grant ya

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Not trash at all, reading Chaos Theory is quite stimulating.

Indeed.

Try this.

We should build statues to honour traffic wardens and football referees, for without them chaos would not just be a theory.

New Statesman, Sept 19, 1997, by Sean French

When, a couple of year ago, that man was sent to prison for having his scrotum nailed to a board, I had two thoughts. The first was an initial puzzlement that anybody would want to do it.

But then there are those beautiful lines spoken by Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra when her servant dies from simple grief: "If thou and nature are so gently part,/The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,/Which hurts, and is desired."

If you agree that something can hurt and be desired, then you are at least on the spectrum of which scrotum-nailing is towards the far end.

My second thought was wondering why people got so angry about it. If somebody got pleasure from nailing other people's scrotums to boards against their will, then it would be another matter, but what you do with your scrotum in the privacy of your toolshed should be your own affair.

I've never nailed my scrotum to a board, but last weekend I acted as referee in a five-a-side football game at a tenth birthday party. And I discovered in practice what I had already known in theory, which is that players really hate referees. They hate you when you award a free kick against them, however justified, but they aren't grateful when you award it to them. Everybody believed that I was biased against their team, and stupid as well. And blind. They argued, sulked, rolled their eyes, and they didn't say thank you at the end.

It has always seemed to me faintly scary that the two most acceptable hate-figures in British life are the football referee and the traffic warden. Well, they're little Hitlers, aren't they? Give somebody a bit of power and a uniform and they bloody think they're God. I mean, think of all those times you've just left the car on a yellow line for a few minutes, hardly more than five, and you get back and find them writing out a ticket with a triumphant gleam in their piggy little eyes. As for referees, they're blowing their little whistles all the time, just wanting to be noticed. If we could take every referee and traffic warden and just get rid of them, then . . . Then, what?

In any sane society, they would be revered as symbols of the agreements, the social contracts, that keep us from chaos. There would be statues put up to them. Symphonies composed in their honour. Take tennis. Wouldn't it be less frustrating if that net that you keep hitting the ball into were removed? And what about those lines that you keep hitting the ball over? The tennis player is born free, but is everywhere chained by nets and lines. Tear the nets down, rub out the lines, and tennis players can exist in a state of nature, hit the ball as far as they like without penalty.

One can imagine a Dostoevskian version of football in which the referee is no longer believed in and everything is allowed. Some players might kick the ball into their own goal, others might decide to find their own sense of meaning in the game instead of accepting those imposed by others. But - to wax philosophical for a moment - the result would be something other than football. A game consists of its rules, and a referee is a symbol not of tyranny but of the implicit agreement between those who play the game. In the same way, a traffic warden is a symbol of a truly civilised form of communal agreement, namely that if each of us refrains from acting for our immediate advantage, in this case being able to park wherever we want, the result will be better for everybody.

But there is a recurrent problem in game theory. We do best if everybody else follows the rules and we carry on cheating. The urge to bellow at referees and traffic wardens is that unexpressed sense that rules are important but we still claim the throw-in, even though we know the ball came off our boot.

And as for refereeing again, I'd rather . . . well, bring me a hammer, a nail and a board and I'll demonstrate for you.

 

[Gwylan]

What was most surprising about that interview was that he named his best-ever World XI and there was no room for Pele, Maradona or Cruyff...but he did pick Graham Souness and Malcolm McDonald.

Must be a Scottish thing...

 

[balloonboy]

I think you'll find that Pele and Maradona ARE in Ian Dowie's World XI.....

 

[Hungry Joe.]

Quality stuff LB. Isn't part of Chaos Theory that out of chaos naturally comes order? (shoot me down boffins). I vaguley remember seeing this programme about chaos theory where this guy programmed his computer with a programme that consisted of loads of 'birds' flying around the screen with completely random co-ordinates. He left the programme running and after a while the birds started to flock together until eventually they were pretty much all swooping around the screen together. By that theory if we leave our midfield alone eventually, in a few seasons, they'll be able to string more than three passes together. Ole'!

 

[scotjem]

That is Craig Reynold's 'Boids' program. Emergent properties, such as flocking are more the domain of Complexity Theory rather than Chaos - however, nobody really knows what the theory is yet.

 

[Jim D]

We already get all our midfielders up one end - while the ball's at the other one!!

 

[Hungry Joe.]

That is Craig Reynold's 'Boids' program. Emergent properties, such as flocking are more the domain of Complexity Theory rather than Chaos - however, nobody really knows what the theory is yet.

I thank you scotjem. I think my woman is also a good example of complexity theory.