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    As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never seen anyone in a real game called for doing a throw-in improperly, but that was common when I played in the Center Region Parks & Recreation Biddy Soccer League circa 1983.

    Comment


      Some guesses then

      1. Attacker taking a correctly executed throw-in throws the ball vehemently at an opponent, who ducks, and the ball hits one of the attacker's own players instead. Decision?
      Violent conduct (thanks for the clue) - yellow card; free kick.to other team from the touchline

      2. A defender who's off the field to get treatment for an injury picks up a spare ball and throws it at the match ball, which just happens to be rolling towards the defender's empty net. The action prevents a goal. What next?
      Red card for the player who did it*. Denial of goal scoring opportunity - did it happen in the box? Penalty then.

      *sort of happened at Penybont v Barry back in August. The player who threw the ball onto the pitch was red carded.


      3. Free-kick just outside the penalty area. Wall is at its proper distance. Directly behind the wall a defender lies on the ground to 'strengthen" the wall. Is this allowed?
      I thought I'd heard that it had been banned.

      4. Indirect free-kick for the defending team ten yards in front of their goal. The taker accidentally kicks the ball against the referee's back, and it rebounds into his goal past the waylaid keeper. Decision?
      No goal. Drop ball where the ref was stood.

      5. Attacker through on goal is fouled by a defender just outside the penalty area, the ball runs on to another attacker who controls the ball, dribbles a few yards and - completely alone and free in front of the goal - shoots. The goalkeeper saves and the ball goes out behind the goal. Decision?
      Corner

      6. Team A is 0-1 down but gets a penalty just before the final whistle. The club linesman does not agree and at great volume insults the referee. Decision?
      The Team A linesman? You could dismiss him then end the game as there are not enough officials - with no penalty kick for Team A. If it's the Team B linesman, ignore him at the time and include in match report.

      7. Penalty shootout. The taker commits an illegal feint, while at the same time the goalkeeper - already on a yellow - moves from his line clearly too soon. Nevertheless, he can't stop the shot. decision?
      Retake. Warn both players.

      8. Defending team takes a quick indirect free-kick in its own penalty area. The taker's team-mate, standing just inside the area, can't control the ball and it runs to an attacker who didn't have time to leave the penalty area before the kick was taken. He shoots and scores. Decision?
      Goal

      9. Same situation, except this time the attacker was poised and waiting for the ball. He shoots and scores. He'd already done the same thing in the first half. Decision?
      Goal again, if attacker is outside area by the time he receives the fumbled ball.

      10. A goalkeeper furious at the perceived lack of injury time runs up to the ref right after the final whistle and grabs his lower arm to take a look at his watch. Decision?
      Red card and report for assault of referee. 6 month ban if upheld.

      Comment


        Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
        As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never seen anyone in a real game called for doing a throw-in improperly, but that was common when I played in the Center Region Parks & Recreation Biddy Soccer League circa 1983.
        Happened to a Wealdstone player yesterday.

        Comment


          It's a well known 'fact' that the higher the level the lower the threshold for legal throw ins. An entire half of a park game can just be alternative players being penalised for imperfect throws.

          Comment


            It amazes me how many coaches don't teach their kids how to take a proper throw-in, especially as it's so simple. It's also infuriating as a coach to lose possession because your player's too dozy or lazy to bring the ball form the back of his/her head, or keep their feet on the ground. Refs here usually start to penalise them at U13 level, though in the past when I've done games below that age group (in the US) I've just made them re-take, with a quick instruction on how.

            It's also astonishing to see how many pros get away with foul throws, as seand says. When I'm reffing a men's game, I hear at last half a dozen mutterings of "foul throw" during a game, and those are for throws that are usually legit, but sometimes borderline illegal (but I let them go). I'm not sure many players even really know what is or isn't a foul throw (despite, as I say, it being Amazingly Fucking Simple to take a proper throw-in).

            If we're going to let pros get away with blatantly lifting one foot off the floor, though, then we might as well just go ahead and change the law. Toss the bloody ball in under-arm for all I care.

            Comment


              At my son's age (Under 9) they pretty much just let them try and throw it in, and the only real insistence is that the ball is behind the head. Jumping or feet in the air is seen as ok. My older boy played and at around U11 a player's first foul throw is brought back to be attempted again, any subsequent foul throws are then penalised accordingly. I found that, as they're kids, the one foul throw leeway really works. My lad would be U13 this season, had he not given up back in March, and I think from this season no leeway is given.

              Comment


                Proper form - the back foot dragging the grass, the front foot behind the line and the hands over the head - was one of the only proper soccer things I learned as a kid. The rest of it was "DON'T BUNCH UP" and "PASS." It was mostly just hoofing it long.

                Comment


                  Slightly strange game yesterday on a shite pitch at the arse-end of nowhere where about 50 fans actually paid to watch this.

                  Better crack on with that fookin' test...

                  Comment


                    The ref at the WBA vs Charlton game on Saturday had rather a tough time, and there was a case that he should neither have allowed Robson-Kanu's goal that put Albion 2-1 up, nor awarded Charlton their late penalty.


                    More interestingly, he quite rightly pulled out his red card following an awful tackle by Albion left-back Nathan Ferguson, only to show it to midfielder Grady Diangana instead. There followed a lengthy discussion, during which Diangana refused to move and Slaven Bilic imparted some wisdom. Finally, Diangana was reprieved and Ferguson dispatched to the dressing-room. This is not the first time I've seen a referee show a card to the wrong player, but I didn't know coaches etc were now allowed to play a role in ensuring that the right player is punished. As long as Bilic was accepting that Ferguson had to go, I guess this is not such a bad development. In fact, I imagine the ref's only wish in the circumstances was that he could benefit from Lee Bowyer's input as well. Sadly, Bowyer was serving a touchline ban and was up on a gantry somewhere.

                    Comment


                      The answers:

                      1. Attacker taking a correctly executed throw-in throws the ball vehemently at an opponent, who ducks, and the ball hits one of the attacker's own players instead. Decision? Direct free-kick at point of impact, red card.

                      2. A defender who's off the field to get treatment for an injury picks up a spare ball and throws it at the match ball, which just happens to be rolling towards the defender's empty net. The action prevents a goal. What next? Penalty. Red card.

                      3. Free-kick just outside the penalty area. Wall is at its proper distance. Directly behind the wall a defender lies on the ground to 'strengthen" the wall. Is this allowed? Yes.

                      4. Indirect free-kick for the defending team ten yards in front of their goal. The taker accidentally kicks the ball against the referee's back, and it rebounds into his goal past the waylaid keeper. Decision? Corner-kick.*

                      5. Attacker through on goal is fouled by a defender just outside the penalty area, the ball runs on to another attacker who controls the ball, dribbles a few yards and - completely alone and free in front of the goal - shoots. The goalkeeper saves and the ball goes out behind the goal. Decision? Play on (I realised from the answers that, as 'corner kick' wasn't an option, the German phrasing 'abwehren' meant merely that the goalkeeper had saved the ball, but hadn't punched it out of play, as i'd assumed.)

                      6. Team A is 0-1 down but gets a penalty just before the final whistle. The club linesman does not agree and at great volume insults the referee. Decision? Penalty. Switch the club linesman.

                      7. Penalty shootout. The taker commits an illegal feint, while at the same time the goalkeeper - already on a yellow - moves from his line clearly too soon. Nevertheless, he can't stop the shot. decision? No goal, no re-take, yellow card for shooter.

                      8. Defending team takes a quick indirect free-kick in its own penalty area. The taker's team-mate, standing just inside the area, can't control the ball and it runs to an attacker who didn't have time to leave the penalty area before the kick was taken. He shoots and scores. Decision? Goal.

                      9. Same situation, except this time the attacker was poised and waiting for the ball. He shoots and scores. He'd already done the same thing in the first half. Decision? Re-take the goal kick, yellow card for the attacker.

                      10. A goalkeeper furious at the perceived lack of injury time runs up to the ref right after the final whistle and grabs his lower arm to take a look at his watch. Decision? Red card.

                      I got question four wrong. There's a long-winded and frankly baffling explanation as to why it's not a drop ball, which was the answer I'd gone for after a long examination of the Laws:
                      "Contact by the referee only leads to a drop-ball when there's a change of possession, the referee causes a goal-scoring opportunity or a legal goal is scored - and indeed only then, when the ball remains in play (when the a goal is legally scored and the ball remains in the goal, the ball is in actuality still in play**). This question involves a free-kick situation, from which it's not possible to score an own goal (regardless of whether it's direct or indirect). In that case the referee's contact with the ball is indeed a reality (hard to translate this - 'vorhanden', which means among other things 'existent'/'existing'/'proven'), the ball then enters the goal, which in this case means the ball is out of play. When the ball therefore goes out of play, the re-start must be a goal-kick/corner-kick or throw-in, in this case a corner kick. True, there's now a change in possession, but this has explicitly not been classified by Fifa as a classic change of possession. That is also the theoretical solution for this question."

                      For which my theoretical retort would be, "Oh, please just go and fuck yourselves."

                      ** Now, Law 9.1 in the English-language version of the laws says:
                      1. Ball out of play
                      The ball is out of play when:
                      - it has wholly passed over the goal line or touchline on the ground or in the air
                      - play has been stopped by the referee

                      It does not classify the ball as still being legally in play when a goal is scored. So fuck knows what that stuff is about the ball in actuality still being in play when it's crossed the goal-line.

                      Even stranger, the German-language edition of Law 9.1 is longer and much more explicit:

                      "The ball is out of play when:
                      - it has wholly passed over the goal or touchline on the ground or in the air
                      - play has been stopped by the referee
                      - it makes contact with the referee, but stays on the field of play and:
                      * sets up a promising attack for a team
                      * the ball goes directly into the goal (Note: this is the sentence that prompted my wrong answer)
                      * there is a change in possession
                      In all these cases, play is re-started with a drop-ball."

                      Comment


                        This weekend's blog - a yellow card after 45 seconds in game one, and having to disallow an absolutely pearler of a goal in game two.

                        Comment


                          "I do wonder if anyone would have protested if I'd let the goal stand, but that's not a risk you can take. If I'd signalled for the goal, then any home team player - assuming they were clued up on the laws - would have been well within his rights to strongly protest. While I would have demonstrated that, as a referee, I either didn't know the new law, or that for some reason I was not prepared to implement it. I'm not sure which of those two truths would have been more damning."

                          Whistling it was not just the right call by the laws of the sport, but also the right one in practical terms. Officials picking and choosing which rules to apply according to whether they think they are right and fair is a big can of worms. You have to ref to the laws of the game as they currently stand, however idiotic you think they might be. So not implementing it would be more damning, for me.

                          Comment


                            Augsburg‘s goal in their 1-0 win over Paderborn this weekend was scored from a direct free-kick, with Rani ‚brother of Sami‘ Khedira a mere half arm‘s length from the four-man Paderborn wall. No one‘s sure how the ref missed it, and how the video ref missed it too. Obviously it‘s about time I was promoted up eight levels.

                            Comment


                              It took a while for the ref to explain to Bastian Hery that he couldn't stand in the wall when his Linfield team had an attacking free kick in last night's match at Dundalk. Players, generally, are thick as fuck which doesn't help matters.

                              Comment


                                Was that a rule that came in half-way through the season for the LOI teams?

                                Comment


                                  Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
                                  Was that a rule that came in half-way through the season for the LOI teams?
                                  Ah, that's an interesting question. I remember in the US that we only used to implement the new law changes from summer at the start of the following calendar year (the annual re-certification was done by calendar year, whereas in Germany it's done at the end of the season), though maybe that's changed now.

                                  Comment


                                    Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
                                    Was that a rule that came in half-way through the season for the LOI teams?
                                    I don't think it came in during the League of Ireland season which ran Feb-Oct. The Dundalk-Linfield match was a cross border thing, so I assume the new rules have been in place for Linfield (and the offender Hery) since the summer. Dundalk and other Irish clubs had the challenge of the new rules applying in UEFA competition qualifying rounds in July while playing with the old rules domestically.

                                    Comment


                                      Fraught and shouty game last night, including a sweary outburst from myself in English. Another ride home wondering exactly why on earth I do this.

                                      Comment


                                        I was watching some mid-1980s MOTD on YouTube, and when a player is sent off Barry Davies says something like "Of course that would have been a red card last season, but not any more". I'd completely forgotten that the card system was abandoned for a while in the Football League, before being reinstated later in the decade.

                                        There must be some "Who got sent off six times but only got one red card?" type question to annoy people with there. (Obviously there was also the era before cards, though fewer players were dismissed then).

                                        Comment


                                          Originally posted by imp View Post
                                          Fraught and shouty game last night, including a sweary outburst from myself in English. Another ride home wondering exactly why on earth I do this.
                                          And here's another report of more violent on-field behaviour: this time it was a linesman getting chinned in the semi-final of the Südwestpokal last night. Rüssingen were 1-0 up against Waldalgesheim and already down to ten men, then had a second player sent off. Scenes ensued and a third home player decided that his best course of action would be to lamp the linesman (all of this captured on film, linked to in this article from the Rheinpfalz) and the ref immediately took the players off and abandoned the match. Waldalgesheim are demanding to be awarded the match but another Rüssingen player seems to be blaming the ref as his initial red card decisions were 'excessive'...

                                          Comment


                                            Thanks for that link, JVL. Re. that fraught and shouty game from last week - turns out that the main trouble-makers, the home team, fielded too many first-teamers and so lost the match 0-3 by default (rather than 4-6, which was the actual scoreline). You can only field a limited number of players (two or three, I think) that played in the first team's last game. The away team had actually expressed concern to me about this before kick-off - it's always possible when the Reserves are playing midweek and the first team has off. So I asked the home team's coach about it and he said, "Oh no, we'd never do a thing like that." It's not my responsibility to check that or even ask about it - the computer system automatically notifies the club if they put ineligible players in the starting line-up. But they were stupid enough to try cheating anyway, or just too stupid to know the rules. And they could have saved themselves the trouble of yelling at me when they were destined to lose anyway thanks to their open dumbness and incompetence. Ha!

                                            Comment


                                              imp , I probably should know the answer to this, but at Step 10 or 11 in Germany do you have linesmen allocated to officiate alongside you, or club linesmen, or no linesmen at all? My follow-up question would be if you have a sense that the variability of those arrangements has any impact on players’ or benches’ responses to offside calls.

                                              Comment


                                                I ref up to Level 8, and there are no linesmen there - they start in the 'Gruppenliga' at level 7. To ref at level 7, I'd have to re-certify as a linesman as well as a centre ref and... theoretically be under 50, although it's not necessarily an obstacle if you're good enough and fit enough (I have no interest in this at my age, though). That just applies to the state of Hessen, though. In some states, I think they have linesmen all the way down the chain. The problem is, of course, recruitment. There simply aren't enough people willing to do the thankless job.

                                                And to answer your question - well, you'd think that it would impact the responses, but it doesn't. It's the thing that players, coaches and spectators scream about the most. You are expected to get every call right. You have to be looking in two directions at once - the second the ball is played, you have to make sure there's no late tackle coming in on the player who's played the ball, and then miraculously be looking in the other direction, maybe 30-40 yards away, to see if someone was in an offside position the second the ball was played. Needless to say, it's not always easy, although you train yourself to try and get it right.

                                                It doesn't matter how often you ask the clubs why they themselves voted against having linesmen (it's because they don't want to pay for them, and because they know they will also have to recruit people to do it from within their own club - you get points deducted if your club doesn't provide a requisite number of referees every season, and adding linesmen would add to the risk of a points deduction for those teams that can't push people to take the course and then take the abuse), or how often you go and have a sarcastic conversation with an imaginary linesman, you still get yelled at constantly for offside calls, whichever way you give them. Or even in/out of play calls - I yellow-carded a coach two weeks ago for that.

                                                Comment


                                                  Thank you, very interesting. I follow a Step 11 division local to me and most league games get allocated three officials. Sometimes, for whatever reason, there are no linesmen available for some fixtures and in those instances each club has to provide someone to run the line. It's not supposed to be one of the subs but sometimes it is. I've never seen a game played without any linesmen at all.

                                                  Comment


                                                    I get club linesmen, or I'm supposed to - I wrote about them on the blog here in summer. Most of the time, though, you're just as well off without them. A couple of years ago I wrote about a little old guy from the home team who twice tried flagging for offside when the away team was through on goal. Both times they scored, and at half-time he came huffing and puffing over to me to ask why I'd over-ruled his calls. First, I said, because they weren't offside, and second because you're only supposed to flag for the ball going out of play. He threw down his flag and that was the last I saw of him.

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