The Refereeing Thread

[Uros Predic]

I don't remember a time you could ever be offside from a throw-in.

But like you I'm surprised few teams exploit it. In both our Uni and Sunday league sides we had a couple of full-backs with a long-throw, so we'd ensure the first throw they took they launched it as far as possible down the line for a winger/forward. If the defence were already set, the thrower would put on a big act about everyone being too far away for him to reach them with a throw, get everyone to come close bar one forward who'd stay beyond the defence pretending to tie his lace or some such then the thrower would launch it at him.

[Ray de Galles]

I’m sure I recall the rule changing, relatively recently too.

Did I imagine it, or was I just ignorant of it for a surprisingly long time?

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

I don't think you've ever been offside from a throw.

[Patrick Thistle]

No that rule has been around forever. I remember learning it in school. Also that you can't score direct with a throw in.

[Ray de Galles]

I don’t know which is worse :

- the idea that I imagined it as a recent rule change

- that I may never have known the rule until someone revealed it to me in the last 15 years or so

- the realisation that if it isn’t a recent rule change that players/coaches have struggled to adapt to then it’s just that they’ve NEVER taken advantage of it

[Nurse Duckett]

On a related topic - and apologies if it's been covered somewhere here before - what's the thinking behind the law that you can you be offside from your own (direct or indirect) free kick, following a transgression from the opposition, but not from a throw-in, where the opposition has merely put the ball out of play? It seems to me the other way around would be more logical.

[mirko bolesan]

I think the oddest rule about the free-kick is that the player taking the free-kick can't touch the ball more than once. It would make a lot more sense to allow an attacker to run with the ball as an option (as they do in field hockey) as it would give the attacking side an extra option/advantage.

[Ray de Galles]

Like the quick tap penalty in rugby? The problem I can see with that is imposing the ten yard rule. The equivalent ten metre rule in rugby is already pretty haphazardly officiated, imagine trying to ensure the opposing team don’t tackle the player until he’s covered that distance or what happens if he does pass it and it doesn’t go more than ten yards from the initial offence.

[Snake Plissken]

My initial thought was to waive the 10 yard rule if the attacking team takes a quick free kick but we already have players standing in front of the ball preventing it being taken so that might not help.

[Levin]

Wasn't this addressed in imp's suggestions to the international board?

[Ray de Galles]

My initial thought was to waive the 10 yard rule if the attacking team takes a quick free kick but we already have players standing in front of the ball preventing it being taken so that might not help.

If you take a quick free kick and run with the ball but the opposition don’t have to retreat ten yards where is the advantage? It’s effectively playing on.

[Janik]

Wasn't this addressed in imp's suggestions to the international board?

Not sure if it was one of imp's suggestions, but it was definitely one FIFA announced they were considering experimenting with. I think we discussed it on this thread a few pages back. It appears that, in Football, if you take a quick free-kick when the opposition are not ten yards away then you basically forfeit your advantage. Which rather undermines the rule, at least from it's Hockey implementation. There it really punishes foul play because, rather than slowing the attack down a 'delaying' foul ends up taking defenders out of the game. If the defenders attempt to tackle after the free hit, it is deemed a cynical foul worthy of an immediate card (termed 'deliberate breakdown of play').

Here is an example, which probably needs a little explaining. A 7 seconds in the video, the ball is knocked on to foot of the German player (no.7) - this is a foul and a free hit to China. The Chinese player takes it immediately, and the German player doesn't retreat from the free hit spot but rather closes her opponent down and puts her stick out to try and tackle the ball. The Chinese player beats this rather feeble tackle, the umpires play advantage and she launches an attack. When this move comes to nothing (fairly soon after the German no.7 comes to a skidding halt on her arse in attempting to track back, she had a bad 30 seconds here!), the Umpire who played the advantage calls no.7 over and shows her a green card, which means a 2 minute sin bin. 7 then runs over to the sideline to serve her suspension.

Would it happen like this in Football? Probably not. There would be lots of arguing. So much Football thinking is defenders must do something to try and stop an attacker, even if they have got themselves into a situation where there is nothing within the rules that they can possibly do that will influence play. cf. the excuse imp mentioned up thread of a defender he had given a penalty against for shoving an opponent asking "What else am I supposed to do?!?". Erm, how about make no challenge at all if there isn't a legal one you can make? But that does mean a vast mindset change, for both players and followers of the game.


It probably should be noted that a 'self-pass', as it is so called, is a reasonably recent rule change in Hockey as well, coming within the last five years. But it has been a very good and very effective one.

One huge advantage it has as a rule is cutting down on dissent. If the opposition can take a free-hit instantly, and if deliberately standing in the way is a straight card and everybody knows this, there is nothing the player who has just committed the foul can do if they disagree decision to slow the game down so that they can argue the toss about it. Doing that just means they are way out of position and getting massive abuse from their teammates. I watched a bit of a game recentlyish that was a high level Women's match (East Regional Premier Division, so around the equivalent of the lower reaches of the Football League). The discipline of the players in not arguing was noticeable. And then I saw why; one player had a decision go against her, which she clearly disagreed with (probably with cause, but that is by-the-by). As she took a step towards the Umpire to dispute it, her opponent put the ball down, took the free-hit and ran in the opposite direction, into a huge hole where the argumentative player should have been. Her coach blew a gasket at her and immediately substituted* her for letting the team down. Lesson presumably well and truly learned!

* - she came back on five minutes later, as Hockey has rolling subs. Which is also advantageous to coaches in making points about such things.

[Janik]

Oh, and another thing that Hockey uses to put the onus on players to behave. The 120 seconds of the sin-bin only begins being counted when the player's arse hits the sin-bin chair. The Umpires do not have to wait for her to get there before they restart the game. So it's in her best interests to sprint off the pitch and thereby minimise the time her side are playing a man down.

[Satchmo Distel]

I think the oddest rule about the free-kick is that the player taking the free-kick can't touch the ball more than once. It would make a lot more sense to allow an attacker to run with the ball as an option (as they do in field hockey) as it would give the attacking side an extra option/advantage.

Would make penalties more fun.

[imp]

No game this past weekend - went wine-tasting out in the Rheingau and I have to admit, I'm a fucking idiot for not doing that every weekend. Didn't stop me pontificating on the culture of anger and violence having become the accepted norm in the amateur game.

[Furtho]

This is very timely, imp (noting that there probably isn’t a time when it isn’t). On Saturday in the local league I follow most closely, a game was abandoned with just a couple of minutes to go when one of the away team was sent off. Reports as to what followed are inevitably a bit hazy (I wasn’t there, thank God) but it appears the guy who was sent off was abused by, possibly drunk, home fans and the whole thing then kicked off: a mass brawl involving players, staff and supporters from both sides.

I pity the poor officials in a situation like this. What on earth can they do? At an individual level, players have received lengthy bans only to go on playing under another name.

When it comes to the events of Saturday there has been much discussion about possible disciplinary steps the league may take, but my feeling is their response is likely to be as smallscale as they feel they can get away with. This sort of thing is just an enormous pain in the arse for organisations staffed by volunteers and a serious response requires serious coordination, which I doubt they’re really in a position to provide. I shudder to think what actions would be necessary if they decided to kick two teams out of the league, for instance.

[imp]

Large fines, individual bans and team bans are the only means available, but one of the problems at the local level is that everyone knows each other, and these teams have been around for decades, even longer, so there will always be behind-the-scenes talks you don't know about. I was called in front of the disciplinary panel twice in quick succession two years ago, but not once since, despite reporting many more incidents just as bad, if not worse, than those two cases. That could be because there were fines and bans handed out that the clubs accepted, but I don't know because there's no transparency - we're never told what the outcome is unless it goes to the disciplinary panel. My fear is they think, "Ah, this ref is always writing up disciplinary reports, these cases can't be all that bad." I know for a fact that a lot of refs just don't bother - either too lazy or they don't want the hassle, or maybe they're intimidated into not taking things further. At our last monthly meeting one ref of several years experience claimed that he had never seen the disciplinary report form for a straight red card, and did not know you were supposed to fill one out. So there's that too - wilful ignorance, so part of the problem definitely lies with my colleagues.

[Snake Plissken]

Oh, and another thing that Hockey uses to put the onus on players to behave. The 120 seconds of the sin-bin only begins being counted when the player's arse hits the sin-bin chair. The Umpires do not have to wait for her to get there before they restart the game. So it's in her best interests to sprint off the pitch and thereby minimise the time her side are playing a man down.

If they implemented the sin-bin in football, that would be a perfect way to do it. What a superb idea.

[tracteurgarcon]

Would it happen like this in Football? Probably not. There would be lots of arguing. So much Football thinking is defenders must do something to try and stop an attacker, even if they have got themselves into a situation where there is nothing within the rules that they can possibly do that will influence play. cf. the excuse imp mentioned up thread of a defender he had given a penalty against for shoving an opponent asking "What else am I supposed to do?!?". Erm, how about make no challenge at all if there isn't a legal one you can make? But that does mean a vast mindset change, for both players and followers of the game.

Fucking hell. This. This. This.

This encapsulates something I've been thinking about for quite sometime, especially when a defender brings down an attacker who's running through on goal, almost everyone will say "He had to bring him down" but why did he? Why is the default setting of most people in football to automatically do something which breaks the rules? A player who makes the sensible decision and rather than foul someone and get sent off will get derided for not having enough "commitment" or some such bollocks, rather than being praised for making a rational choice.

[Patrick Thistle]

A friend who plays in the Welsh League faced this issue. Got a bollocking off a former manager for not committing a professional foul.

[Janik]

Except, in some cases, it isn't a rational choice. cf. Luis Suarez punching the ball off the Uruguayan goalline in 2012. He doesn't do that, and Ghana certainly win. He does, and he opens up the possibility of Uruguay doing so. A foul that was definitely worth it.

A lesser case but essentially the same thing would be one where a cross is clearly going to be won by the forward, who will head at goal. There is nothing the defender can possibly do to stop these, many will currently he will jump into the forward to disturb his balance. That isn't a legal challenge in Football, it's a foul. However the chances are that if the forward still gets his head on the ball and directs it goalwards then the ref will ignore it. If questioned why, he might even acknowledge the defenders challenge wasn't legal but then say "advantage was played". Well, no. In truth this is disadvantage played; the defender has succeeded in their intent, making scoring harder. And scoring is hard enough anyway.

The best way of alleviating this is essentially putting defenders in double jeopardy. If one attempts to 'subtlety' impend an opponent, making bodily contact that really isn't heavy enough to knock them off their feet but certainly is enough to mean they are not fully balanced to strike the ball cleanly at goal, then the large risk is the ref will let the shot go and if it doesn't score still point to the spot. It would take a top down initiative from FIFA to introduce this, and probably would be no fun at all to referee in the first few years, but if enforced it would make only attempting genuine attempts to win the ball the rational defensive course. I think it would also cut down on diving, as it becomes rational for the forward to play on; if he is getting a penalty anyway, he might as well try and fire a shot on the off-chance. Currently it is an irrational course for the forward to do so if he is stumbling. His better bet is to not fight gravity and hope for the spot kick rather than swishing off-balance at the ball.

[Levin]

Hang on, there are two different things being discussed here.

The original example, someone complaining about being penalised for committing an offence is very different from someone committing an offence and accepting the punishment because the punishment has less impact than not doing the foul.

Football isn't about keeping to the rules. Since the very beginning the rules have laid out what things players do to gain an advantage and give means to the other team in an attempt to balance that out. The punishments aren't there to stop people breaking the rules. I mean, there are distinctions. There are actions that will result in serous punishments so the world of football as agreed that some rules are not to be broken and some can be.

Surely a 'professional' foul should be looked down on less than actions that are just clumsy or malicious, that serve no purpose to the team.

I may have been affected by playing handball for the past few years. In that, good defence involves committing offences to break up the attackers play. The attackers keep the ball and restart their attack but the defence can reset itself. It has a balance to mitigate the benefit gained by the defence, more serious violations of the rules are actually punished by 2 minute sin bins which give a distinct advantage to the other team.

I feel I've missed your points a little, but I think it comes down to the rules not defining the edges of the game but the rules being part of the game.

[imp]

My blog post this week repeats some of my story from the match-going thread - sorry about that. But it all linked up to something that happened in the following day's game and allowed me to prove a point to frau imp. I feel it's a very important part of a marriage to be always right.

[Bermuda Iron]

Ah 'common sense' and 'flexibility', traits we as referees are not always allowed to display, yet they are an important part of our match day arsenal. One of my fellow instructors here bangs on about 'there are 17 Laws of the Game, plus No 18, Common Sense'. Cliched I know, but he has a valid point. If we gave a free-kick for every bit of contact, gave a yellow card for every moan and questioning of our decisions, then we wouldn't ever get a game of football played. We get enough shit just for trying to apply the laws of the game in our own inimitable style, without making it even worse by being a jobsworth and a pain in the arse 'just because we are the ref and we can'. As an example, over here the FA appoints Match Commissioners to every game. They are not qualified referees, nor should they interfere with the running of the game by the 3 appointed (and qualified) officials. Their role is mainly administrative; they check the team sheets, player cards, make sure security is in place, work with the referee to make sure all is good with the pitch, that sort of thing. At half-time of my game yesterday, the Match Commissioner was at pains to point out to my assistant on the bench side that one of the coaches 'was always outside his technical area giving instructions to the player, you should warn him or have him removed'. Now, my assistant was aware he left his area a couple of times at most, always by only one step or two, and was not getting in the way, shouting abuse, or being a general pain in the arse, he was just coaching his team. There was no way I, or my assistant, was going to make a nothing situation into a major problem by telling him off; in our minds he was doing nothing wrong, not upsetting the other technical area, getting on our backs, or anything like that. I explained this to the Match Commissioner, finishing with 'if my assistant feels that coach is getting in his way, or overstepping the mark, he will have a quiet word with him'. The MC didn't really like this, and is clearly an individual who relishes power and likes telling people off. Common sense does not feature in his 'match day arsenal'. Officiating can be shitty enough at times, why make it even worse?

[Chopper]

I feel it's a very important part of a marriage to be always right.

Absolutely, but they also need, and love, constant reminders.