AWOL

Details of the tournament, and it’s format are to be announced later, but some of the qualification rules and some interesting innovations regarding team selection and match rules have been sketched out, with speculation suggesting that the tournament might be used to test out ideas that would later be introduced to the wider game. One of the more controversial ones is that any physical contact between opposing players, other than hugs and kisses, is deemed a bookable offence for both players, although it will require five yellow cards to receive an orange card, which would trigger five minutes in the ‘understanding bin’, another innovation, and then three orange cards leads to a pink card, which entails a further ten minutes in the understanding bin. No player is ever sent off, but can receive multiple spells in the bin. During these spells, the player is inside a ‘cocoon’ that cuts them off from the game entirely, while they are subjected to soothing music, aromatherapy, and are joined by a ‘peace pal’ – a specially trained dog, who will assist in bringing the player to a state of calm before they return to the game. It has been reported that these understanding bins have been tested with the assistance of former professionals Roy Keane, Joey Barton, and Julian Dicks, and were an amazing success, although one insider refuted this and claimed that “dozens” of the cocoons were destroyed in the testing phase.