The Ref Stop

What's the restart?

YorkieRef

New Member
Okay, so I was reading through the LotG ready for the start of the new season and came across something that got me thinking.

Law 12 - Section 3 - Disciplinary Action
Cautions for Unsporting Behaivour

There are different circumstances when a player must be cautioned for unsporting behaviour including if a player:
  • uses a deliberate trick to pass the ball (including from a free kick) to the goalkeeper with the head, chest, knee etc. to circumvent the Law, whether or not the goalkeeper touches the ball with the hands
How would you restart when a player does this? I can't seem to see where it says how to restart.
 
The Ref Stop
Okay, so I was reading through the LotG ready for the start of the new season and came across something that got me thinking.

Law 12 - Section 3 - Disciplinary Action
Cautions for Unsporting Behaivour

There are different circumstances when a player must be cautioned for unsporting behaviour including if a player:
  • uses a deliberate trick to pass the ball (including from a free kick) to the goalkeeper with the head, chest, knee etc. to circumvent the Law, whether or not the goalkeeper touches the ball with the hands
How would you restart when a player does this? I can't seem to see where it says how to restart.
IFK would be my guess. It's not a DFK offence, so the restart comes under the "stops play to administer a caution" catch-all section of the law.
 
To add on... Where do you penalise the offence? At the position of the goalkeeper, or at the position of where the trick was attempted?
 
Good question. I'm guess given that you're penalising the defender rather than the GK, it must be where the defender attempts the trick?
 
The Laws used to spell this out. Up till 1996, IFAB decision 16 to Law 12 said:
If [...] in the opinion of the referee, a player uses a deliberate trick in order to circumvent article 5(c) of Law XII, the player will be guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and will be punished accordingly under the terms of Law XII; that is to say, the player will be cautioned and shown the yellow card and an indirect free−kick will be awarded to the opposing team from the place where the player committed the offence.
I'm not sure why they took they took that out - probably one of those cases where they thought it was so well-known and/or obvious that it didn't need to be spelled out.
 
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The Laws used to spell this out. IFAB decision 16 to Law 12 said:



in not sure why they took they took that out - probably one of those cases where they thought it was so well-known and/or obvious that it didn't need to be spelled out.
They wanted to significantly reduce the size of the book in 16/17 changes and anything redundant was taken out. Not sure if this was taken out then or before.

As pointed out above the law makes circumventing the laws an offence which must be cautioned. The laws are now consistent on restarts being from the position of the offence (on the FOP). However the wording of the type of restart is a bit ambiguous and misleading.

Law 12.2
An indirect free kick is awarded if a player:
commits any other offence, not mentioned in the Laws, for which play is stopped to caution or send off a player

Circumventing the law and a few other USB offences during play (simulation, verbal distraction of opponent...) are mentioned in the Laws but fall under above category as there are no specific restarts listed for them.

What that clause actually means is "where a restart is not mentioned in the Laws"
 
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Slightly off topic so just to clarify you can knee a ball back to the keeper, anything above the knee is not considered a back pass?

Also if a player passes a ball to a team mate he then flicks it up once & heads it back to the keeper then that’s classed as circumventing?

Also does anyone agree that of all the more serious offences like a keeper picking up or hitting a back pass away not deserving a caution. Circumventing being a mandatory caution seems a little harsh.
 
1. Anything above ankle is fine.

2. Yes.

3. No I don't agree

Thanks can I ask why you don’t agree, it’s showing a degree of skill & quick thinking and isn’t doing anything imoral. Where as a striker clean through on goal about to pick up a loose back pass keeper comes rushing out & dives onto the ball is no caution but has denied a scoring opportunity?
 
Circumventing the laws by definition means cheating. You know you cant do something because you get punished, find a loophole to your advantage and do the same thing thinking you wont get punished. That for me is as immoral as it can get. Tax evasion is a good example in real life.
 
Also does anyone agree that of all the more serious offences like a keeper picking up or hitting a back pass away not deserving a caution. Circumventing being a mandatory caution seems a little harsh.

I agree with you. Totally.
There's loads of things that players are permitted to do that could be classed as "immoral". Taking the ball over to the corner flag to waste time for instance - perfectly acceptable yet doing so at a restart or when the ball is out of play and it's somehow "wrong" to waste time then!! (?) :rolleyes:

The ridiculous fact is, is that modern football is based on a culture of cheating and deception, yet we have this daft law where a player can show a bit of skill in order to "technically" stay within the constraints of the LOTG and we're meant to penalise them for it. :wall:
 
Also does anyone agree that of all the more serious offences like a keeper picking up or hitting a back pass away not deserving a caution. Circumventing being a mandatory caution seems a little harsh.

No not at all, however to understand why this is an offence you need to understand why the ‘pass back’ rule was implemented in the early 90s

This law came into being as in the late 80’s and 1990 World Cup winning teams would often pass the ball back to GK who would pick it up, stand with the ball in his hands for ages then roll the ball out to team mate who would then kick it back, gk would pick it up and the process would repeat for ages, wasting huge amount of time and wasting large parts of the match.

The ‘pass back’ rule was introduced to stop this... however if the defender could just flick the ball up to be headed back then the new rule would fail... that’s why it was made a mandatory caution...and football is all the better for it!
 
Circumventing the laws by definition means cheating. You know you cant do something because you get punished, find a loophole to your advantage and do the same thing thinking you wont get punished. That for me is as immoral as it can get. Tax evasion is a good example in real life.

Probably not a player in the land that is aware of circumventing or what it intales, I couldn’t class a player imoral for flicking the ball up and heading it back to his keeper.
 
Haven't been through the new laws properly yet, what do you mean by this?
Not the very latest laws but recent enough. The main one which made it inconsistent was restart for offside which is now fixed. Fouls off the filed of play are also kind of fixed.
 
however if the defender could just flick the ball up to be headed back then the new rule would fail... that’s why it was made a mandatory caution...and football is all the better for it!

Just out of interest.

Say in the course of play, the ball ends up going back towards the defence, who has to chip the ball to bypass an onrushing attacker. He chips it to his defensive team-mate who heads the ball back to the keeper.

Infringement?

I guess, what I want to ask is there must be a line where something is a natural play and a circumvention of the laws?

This is such a rare offence though, that I've never really dug deeper into the specifics.
 
Just out of interest.

Say in the course of play, the ball ends up going back towards the defence, who has to chip the ball to bypass an onrushing attacker. He chips it to his defensive team-mate who heads the ball back to the keeper.

Infringement?

I guess, what I want to ask is there must be a line where something is a natural play and a circumvention of the laws?

This is such a rare offence though, that I've never really dug deeper into the specifics.


In that situation I would say no infringement. The defender is playing the ball to a team mate during the course of normal play.

Circumvention would be a player deliberately flicking it up to himself to head back to GK or two defenders at the edge of the penalty area flicking it up for the other to head back.

In the open play example the defender is intending to play the ball to a team mate to avoid attackers

In circumvention examples above the intention an deliberate action I is to get around the ‘passback’ rule to allow the GK to pick it up.

It is a very very rare occurrence and after 20+ years of refereeing I have never seen this in any game I’ve been involved in or any game I’ve watched.
 
I missed blowing for a player heading a ball along the floor as a back pass back to his keeper. It riled me all game that I knew something was wrong but at the time I failed to act! In honesty, it was a low key game and would have called WW3 so Ignorring it was a bad call and against my ethos. I completely regretted my decision later. Never happened again so never got the chance to put my error behind me so it’s slways nagged me as an error!
 
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