Recently I read an article entitled ‘Why we should love our referees’, written by Craig Fowler who was writing about Scottish referees.
He wrote, ‘If only our national team was as terrible as our referees, we’d be a much more successful football country’.
He was referring to the fact that Scottish referees are regularly appointed to international games by UEFA or FIFA but the Scottish football team, seldom plays in them.
What attracted me, however, was the sub headline ‘ The football rule book is extremely vague when it comes to fouls’. He wrote, ‘the Laws of the Game tell a referee it’s a foul if a player ’trips, kicks, jumps at, charges. strikes, pushes, or tackles an opponent in a manner which is careless, reckless or uses excessive force’.
You could scarcely get more ambiguous. A group of referees could look at the same incident and have a 50/50 split on whether it constitutes a foul’.
I’ve been at many referees’ meetings where a video of an incident is shown, and there is seldom a unanimous decision amongst the referees present. I’ve often said in this column that many decisions are subjective and perhaps Craig Fowler has found the real reason.
There are a lot of the Laws which are not spelt out, so it has to come down to the training referees receive.
Let’s take one point Craig makes ‘There isn’t any mention in the Laws of the Game about “playing the ball”, which is one of the most common phrases at all levels of football’.
As an FA referee tutor, I physically illustrated this by acting as a player coming in from the side of an opponent running with the ball. If I played the ball and then the opponent fell over my leg, that would be perfectly fair. If however, I made contact with the opponents legs before playing the ball, it was a foul.
So was the opponent falling over an outstretched leg after the ball had been played, or was he brought down?
That’s my interpretation of the Law but I’ve never seen it written anywhere, so other tutors may have their own interpretation.
Similarly, I always taught a charge as referring to a shoulder charge, and to be fair it must be shoulder to shoulder and not into the back or chest. Also, if one of the players lifts an arm it becomes pushing. But am I right?
None of this is written down, so as Craig Fowler said, there’s always likely to be subjective decisions at fouls.
By Dick Sawdon Smith
