‘You’ve told us about the changes to the handball law, but what about any other changes,’ a football fan asked me.
Well there are a few more changes but some are technical, which would be of little interest to the normal fan and others that might seem a little obtuse.
There is one which has bemused referees who operate in ‘grass roots’ football. Law seven, the duration of the match, has the word ‘playing’, added to ‘allowance for lost time’.
So the law now says, ‘allowance is made for all playing time lost’.
Basically, what this is referring to, is if there is a stoppage, say for an injury, with two minutes to play and the treatment of the injury takes five minutes.
When the game restarts, only the two minutes playing time lost is played, and not the length of the injury treatment.
Why grass roots referees are confused, is because for stoppages, they stop their watch, so if there is two minutes left on their watch, that is what they will play, irrespective of how long the injury treatment takes.
However, in his book “Blowing the Whistle”, Stuart Carrington says that Premier League referees do not stop their watch.
For each substitution they add 30 seconds and any other stoppages, will be recorded by an assistant referee or the fourth official.
They will pass this to the referee who will add them to his substitute calculations.
I don’t know if this is actually true but I remember Alan Pardew, when he was manager of Reading Football Club, making the same allegations.
At the time, I thought this was perhaps sour grapes, because I couldn’t imagine any referee wanting to do mental arithmetic during a match.
However, I put this to David Elleray, Director of the IFAB Technical Committee, He said: ‘I assure you that any method used by PGMO had no influence on this slight change.
It came about because we received reports that the stoppage time had been played, causing confusion’.
Of course these reports could come through IFAB’s other committee, from anywhere the game is played in the world.
By Dick Sawdon Smith
