Hi all, I've been running the line this season as my son's team has just moved up to under 11s. So far so good but I had an incident on Sunday that I wanted to research and it seems as though it wasn't as straightforward as I thought.
Ball is played into the home team's penalty area, everyone onside. Attacking player tackled, ball runs free. Attacking player gets up and then walks into an offside position. Defender controls ball, moves it onto his stronger foot and attempts to clear upfield. Ball strikes a player in front of the defender (I believe another defender but he was close to an attacking player, both of whom were trying to protect themselves/avoid the ball as it was being struck with force) and ricochets to the attacker who is standing beyond the last defender (i.e. in an offside position) and scores.
I didn't flag for offside but the home team's manager was convinced I should have done because he believed it struck an attacking player before ricocheting. I said I felt it was onside because it hit a defender. He seemed to think it was offside anyway even if it had struck a defender.
Having done some research I found a thread on this site that confirmed it was indeed onside if the player it struck was a defender (I thought I was going mad!). But in the same thread it mentioned that the key moment is "the last deliberate play". Given that the "last deliberate play" was the defender's clearance, then does it matter which player it hit? i.e. If it hit the attacker but he was trying to get out of the way then it's not a deliberate play, and so the attacker in an offside position is onside.
Thanks in advance for your help
Ball is played into the home team's penalty area, everyone onside. Attacking player tackled, ball runs free. Attacking player gets up and then walks into an offside position. Defender controls ball, moves it onto his stronger foot and attempts to clear upfield. Ball strikes a player in front of the defender (I believe another defender but he was close to an attacking player, both of whom were trying to protect themselves/avoid the ball as it was being struck with force) and ricochets to the attacker who is standing beyond the last defender (i.e. in an offside position) and scores.
I didn't flag for offside but the home team's manager was convinced I should have done because he believed it struck an attacking player before ricocheting. I said I felt it was onside because it hit a defender. He seemed to think it was offside anyway even if it had struck a defender.
Having done some research I found a thread on this site that confirmed it was indeed onside if the player it struck was a defender (I thought I was going mad!). But in the same thread it mentioned that the key moment is "the last deliberate play". Given that the "last deliberate play" was the defender's clearance, then does it matter which player it hit? i.e. If it hit the attacker but he was trying to get out of the way then it's not a deliberate play, and so the attacker in an offside position is onside.
Thanks in advance for your help