Fabrice Muamba collapses on pitch during FA Cup match

[Tigerbeat]

Bolton player collapses in match against Spurs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17417973

Thoughts are with him and his family and that he wins the fight for his life. Times like this when sport is irrelevant and all fans unite to support.
The game was being shown live on ESPN and all fans showed great respect for the situation, both sets of supporters.

[WhitecapTiger]

http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16191055

SKY now reporting that Muamba is 'stable' - best wishes to him.

[kingol22]

Apparently it was a heart attack. Hope he has a speedy recovery.

[Rykard]

now reported as 'critically ill' - thoughts for him,his friends and family

[BJ.]

I've just seen on Sky Sports News there is a possibility the Bolton Wanderers v Blackburn Rovers match might not be played this coming weekend because of what happened at White Hart Lane last weekend. Can someone please explain to me why this forthcoming fixture should be in doubt? I'm sure Bolton have sufficient players to cover for Fabrice Muamba.

In the middle of last year, one of my colleagues (and a close personal friend) collapsed whilst working in a studio in Mumbai. He was diagnosed with a brain tumour and it was touch and go for a few weeks whether, a) he would live and, b) he would be able to fly back to the UK. At no point did we consider stopping work and closing the office because one of our team was in danger of dying.

I sincerely hope Muamba makes a full and speedy recovery but I don't see why his current condition should interrupt the league schedule.

UPDATE- According to the Sky Sports website, the game is now going ahead as scheduled.

[Kinoulton]

Oddly, BJ, I have had a similar rant in a different media.

Grief is grief, and when I finally s*d off to hell it will be nice if someone says "he made me laugh" or "he helped me out once when I was skint", but I don't want half of Yorkshire to be cordoned off, trains to be cancelled, roads to be closed or sports fixtures to be cancelled.

And I certainly don't want tens of thousands of people who haven't got the faintest clue who I was being made to stand in a minute's silence.

It's all gonads.

When I was following the hearse carrying my dad to the Crematorium I was genuinely impressed at all the children from the local Catholic school who each individually bowed his/her head and made that sign of theirs.

That's proper respect.

[BJ.]

Is this possibly a continuation of the Diana syndrome? You know the one - it's where people go into mass grief mode over a person they have never met nor had their lives changed by them but feel they have to do it because that's what is expected of them and it's what the popular media tells them to do.

[Daveyboy]

I think it is media-inspired, BJ. There were 5 minutely updates on Sky News for 24 hours.

The mass grief phenomenon just seems like an outlet for the mawkish and emotionally-incontinent to me.

[BJ.]

The mass grief phenomenon just seems like an outlet for the mawkish and emotionally-incontinent to me.

That sounds about right.

I find it interesting that, whilst we are being bombarded with news about Muamba, there is hardly anything about Jack Kelly, the father of the Kilmarnock player Liam Kelly, who on the same day collapsed and died shortly after watching his son help to beat Celtic in the Scottish League Cup final.

[Kinoulton]

When Diana died I was sad, of course, because the poor lass never really wanted to harm a flea.

But after 30 minutes of excessive and utterly irrelevant TV coverage I wanted Windsor Davies (aka Battery Sergeant Major "Shut Up") to come on and bark: "Oh dear. How sad. Never mind."

[Rizzo]

I think part of it is that people often don't know how to react to bereavement, shock or grief - thus they react as the media or "society" expect them to...either going overboard, or sort of ignoring it and hoping it'll all go on as before.

and I think of the lyrics that Tim Rice wrote for the musical Evita.

"We've all gone crazy
Mourning all day and mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right"

[BJ.]

I think part of it is that people often don't know how to react to bereavement, shock or grief - thus they react as the media or "society" expect them to...either going overboard, or sort of ignoring it and hoping it'll all go on as before.

I think the word you're looking for is sheep. As long as the popular press will lead, the great unthinking of this nation (and there's a lot of them) will follow.

[Kinoulton]

The other side of the coin is that on a day when made up grief wasn't going to sell papers, The Sun decided that as England had a football match coming up, they cut and pasted a picture of Stuart Pearce and put a World War II helmet on him for their front page.

This is their attempt at tapping into the psyche of the public, and the harrowing thing is that some of the eejits will go with it.

[CJ]

and now a Serie B Italian footballer, Piermario Morosino, has died on the pitch. how awful. He was only 25.

[Rizzo]

It does make you wonder a little, has it just been that in the past we've not heard about these tragic incidents? Or are there more sportsmen and women suffering heart/physical collapses? Or just a dreadful coincidence?

In any event, another young sportsman gone far too soon.