Would there have been the same reaction to the Stephen Hunt tackle on Petr Cech ten years ago if Hunt was English?
During his career Stephen Hunt was known for being combative. Never taking a backward step, never shirking a challenge. And on this day ten years ago, when Hunt was making his first Premier League start for Reading against Chelsea, he saw a chance to challenge for a ball and went for it. His challenge connected with Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech's skull, fracturing it and resulting in the distinctive headgear that Cech still wears when playing to this day.
Stephen Hunt tackle:
In an excellent 'Bleacher Report' piece on the tenth anniversary of the incident, Hunt has denied regretting the tackle while expressing remorse at the incident.
Do I regret (the tackle)? No. Because I don’t feel I did anything to regret. Do I wish it didn’t happen? Of course. I’ve made that wish many times. I wrote a letter to him afterward, wishing him all the best. And I’ve always spoken to Cech briefly every time our paths have crossed, and he has always been a gentleman every time. It would be easy for him not to be like that.
Hunt said that all of the Chelsea players were amicable towards him in the aftermath of the incident, except Dider Drogba, who still "wanted to have a few kicks here and there". Jose Mourinho, who managed the Blues at the time, absolutely lambasted Hunt after the incident, saying that he was "out of his head" when he made the tackle. Frank Lampard and Cech himself also criticised Hunt for not making more effort to get in touch with Cech after the injury.
The reaction towards Hunt at the time was perhaps so vicious because of the nature of Cech's potentially life-threatening injury - the challenge itself was, in truth, fairly innocuous. And judging by the rest of Hunt's career it would have been a freakish lapse in character for him to have deliberately tried to injury Cech.
Any negative reaction towards a player should arguably be based upon the nature of the challenge made by that player rather than the consequence of that challenge. But this is not the reality. For example, a terrible tackle might result in no injury - and once a player has been reprimanded, the world generally moves on. But a bad injury inevitably attracts more attention, more outrage.
If we look at the difference in the criticism of the Stephen Hunt tackle in 2006 and that of Stoke City defender Ryan Shawcross after he broke Aaron Ramsey's leg in 2010 there is a clear contrast. And while Cech's injury was evidently the worrying of two horrifying knocks, Shawcross's tackle was much more forceful and aggressive than Hunt's.
Apart from the obvious anger from Arsenal fans, Shawcross was painted in the days after the incident as some kind of brave hero for crying as he left the field following his tackle on Ramsey, and for his proclamations that he was "deeply upset" at what had happened. Reports detailing the "text messages" he had sent to Ramsey didn't harm his image either. Hunt's declarations that he "did not attempt" to hurt Cech and that he was "very upset", meanwhile, largely fell on deaf ears.
Is this perhaps linked to the fact that around the time of his tackle Shawcross was one of the top Premier League defenders and had just been called up to the England squad, whereas Hunt was a relatively unknown Irishman fighting to establish himself in top flight football? It makes for an interesting hypothesis, at the very least.
