Posted 3/30/2004 08:53:00 PM by Douglas

Long thought to be the sport of participation where everyone gets a trophy, a soccer league in England has even more ideas how to keep from damaging the precious egos of the losing team: Not publishing the scores.

A British soccer league wants to spare children the pain of being trounced on the fiend and then having to read all about it afterward.

The Sheffield and District Football League has forbidden its members from sending scores to the Derbyshire Times after the newspaper reported how an under-nine team was "trounced" 29-0 in a crucial match.

The league, believing this description could heap even more humiliation on children from the losing side, told the newspaper it could not cover any more junior league matches until it agreed not to publish results in which the score exceeds 14 goals.

Derbyshire Times editor Mike Wilson refused and thinks the league is overreacting. "The league is being a bit too politically correct," he told Reuters.

"My son Adam is so disappointed," she said. "He loves to collect cuttings of all his match reports from the newspaper. He understands that winning isn't everything and that football involves taking the good with the bad."

As a lifetime loser, I can say that a good trouncing is all you need sometimes to really get your ass in gear and not get trounced the next time. Ah, public humiliation. Those were the days.