Potential 3 Card Trick Missed

[one]

Kicking the ball away can be dissent and/or delaying the restart. If it’s both which one we we plump for? Is dissent considered to be the more serious offence?

Does that change if a player is already on a yellow card or has already received a dissent caution.

I tend to look at why he kicked the ball away. If he did it in protest of a decision, it's dissent. If he did it so he can waste time, then it's delaying.

But in terms of which is a more serious offence, the law says sanction is considered first.

So if the player has had no binning or caution before, I'd say delaying is more serious given a second yellow he will be off.

If on a caution, obviously delaying means a second caution and he is off so a bigger sanction.

If no previous caution but one sin bin, then dissent is a bigger sanction as he is off permenatly and the team loses a player for 10 minutes.

 

[GraemeS]

Kicking the ball away can be dissent and/or delaying the restart. If it’s both which one we we plump for? Is dissent considered to be the more serious offence?

Does that change if a player is already on a yellow card or has already received a dissent caution.

I think it's usually fairly obvious why a player will have kicked a ball away. If it's not, then I still think you're obliged to take your best guess as to the reason and, i a sin bin/no sin bin is in question, make the decision based on what you think it the most likely reason.

The "more serious offence" clause isn't a get-out for unsure referees, it's for simultaneous offenses only. In addition, it's not up to us to decide which of a sin bin or a standard caution is more or less serious, so again, I don't think you can apply that logic here.