If you were watching the Newcastle v Bournemouth match last Saturday, you may have witnessed one very long period of play, before the referee was able to turn his attention to VAR about a player being offside or to an unseen foul.
This isn’t altogether very rare these days where the game’s match officials include a VAR. The assistant referees are told not to flag for offside unless it is blatantly obvious, but to wait until the next stoppage, in case they may have made a mistake, and a goal could have been scored.
If a goal is scored, the assistant referee may still raise his flag afterwards to indicate his view.
The other thing you may have seen, which is much more unusual, was that the player in the offside position was attempting to play the ball but was being held back by an opponent who had a firm grip of his shirt.
Let me just run through what the Laws say about this type of situation,
‘A player in an offside position is moving towards the ball with the intention of playing the ball and is fouled before playing the ball or attempting to pay the ball, or challenging an opponent for the ball, the foul is penalised as it has occurred before the offside offence.
If however, an offence is committed against a player in an offside position, who is already playing or attempting to play the ball, or challenging an opponent for the ball, the offside offence is penalised as it occurred before the foul challenge’.
These clauses in the Laws may seem to be a rather long-winded explanation, that in these circumstances, the referee must penalise the foul or the offside offence whichever occurs first.
Although this is not something that happens with great regularity, it is something that referees must be aware of.
What it doesn’t say, is what the referee should do if both happen at the same time which might have been the situation on this particular occasion.
Eventually of course, the play came to an end and the VAR was finally able to inform the referee that there had been a happening that he should have a look at on the monitor. From that, the referee decided that the shirt pulling came first which of course meant a penalty as it was inside the penalty area and saved Newcastle’s day.
By Dick Sawdon Smith
