No, you're right, 'Spaw, it's no way to end a game, and if it hasn't happened to your kids' team yet, just pray that it doesn't, because the littl'uns get severely traumatized by it. Various suggestions have been put forward -- the golden goal (sudden death) rule has only recently been introduced, but is apparently moving out of favour with FIFA, because many teams refuse to take a chance and simply play for the penalties;continuing the extra time and removing a player from each team every few minutes, thus opening up the play;counting the number of corners gained during the match... the list goes on, but there's no clincher. Perhaps if the sudden death period were open ended, there'd be more incentive to attack, but I've seen some games that could have gone on all night and the next day with no goals. There must be a fairer way, but finding it and getting everyone to agree on it seem to be beyond us.

BJ