Looks like no one started a thread on it yet, so Chas to the rescue! Here are mine: 1) Point waaaay over there and caution him for the first challenge. Point waaaay back over here and caution him for the second offense. Send him off for 2CT. It's unfortunate, but he did commit two cautionable offenses. If you say nice and loud after the first challenge "Number ___, I'm coming back for you!" then perhaps the warning helps to prevent him from committing that second offense. And if he doesn't take the warning, then it just makes this decision even easier. 2) Another unfortunate one, but i'm giving the offside. I will also caution the defender for UB. USSF (or rather Jim Allen, with USSF's blessing at the time) has contradicting views on this matter. http://www.askasoccerreferee.com/?p=1514 states that in this situation you give an IFK for offside, for interfering with an opponent. http://www.askasoccerreferee.com/?p=3351 states that, since the attacker was not yet involved with play, you award the foul (or in this case, the advantage), and thus award the goal (advantage in the penalty area is fine in this case, since the defender is only "blocking" the attacker. This is an IFK offense, not a penal foul). You have to decide if the attacker becomes involved in play by interfering with an opponent. I decided that he has. If you decide that he hasn't, you then have to determine that there was a foul on the defender, and that you will give advantage. I don't know if i could sell that when the whole situation started with the attacker being in an offside position in the first place. We talk so much about it not being the defender's job to determine if a player is offside, but rather he should continue to play as normal until he hears the whistle. Do we really know for sure that the defender knows that the attacker is offside? Or is he just fighting for position in the dumbest way possible? 3) Seems simple enough. Caution the GK at the next stoppage, have the phone removed, and get on with the game. He can get the scores from the fans in the first row. How would i even know that this is the reason he has his phone? Perhaps he's getting instructions from someone in the stands. I don't know, and i don't care what his reason is. Okay, your turn!
Why do you think deliberately handling the ball is a cautionable offense? If advantage has been applied, it might conceivably be a DOGSO-H, which would warrant a send-off. But barring that (and the question as posed doesn't give any reason to think it is a DOGSO), the handling being deliberate is only the minimum standard required to penalize it. If it's not deliberate, it's not even a foul.
Here's my take on it: 1) Simple. Stop play, caution the defender, and restart with the DFK for handling. 2) No, the goal doesn't stand, but I have a choice on the restart. I can retroactively stop the game and award an IFK to the attackers for impeding (for which I presumably played advantage), or call the offside and award an IFK coming out. The obviously more fair choice is the former here. 3) “Accidentally” step on the phone while getting into position for a corner kick.
#1 doesn't hold enough info for a full answer. We have no idea what the handball incident needs/deserves but as it doesn't specify anything other than it being a handball then I'd say that a FK and a caution (for the first incident) would seem to be the appropriate action.
#2: I haven't had my coffee yet, but I am thinking that if ITOOTR the PIOP would have been able to return to an onside position absent the impeding, then he has committed no infraction, advantage has not materialized, and we have an IFK for that attacking team. I think it is harsh to consider a move to return to an onside position as interfering with an opponent.
It's a bit of a typical you-are-the-ref mushy description. It says "as a long ball is clipped" -- that seems to mean that the kick comes first, and then the OSP player is trying to get back onside. Obviously that would be too late. So the question becomes whether ITOOTR the OSP player interfered with the opponent by a motion that was deceiving or distracting before the impeding occurred.
Well I've heard Hackett called several things before, usually involving "mistaken" or "wrong", but never uninformed.
The phrase "deliberate handball" can only mean one thing. That is a cautionable handling. If ordinary handling is meant, the word "deliberate" is redundant as non-deliberate handling isn't even a foul. As such, it is clear the strip is referring to handling that is cautionable rather than non-cautionable handling. Nothing else makes grammatical or logical sense.
So it's deliberately deliberate handling? Another way of interpreting why he used the word deliberate is to distinguish it from accidental handling.
You are right that there is no handling, cautionable or not, unless it is deliberate, but I think maybe you need to look at the LOTG again.Deliberate handball isn't in the law at all, so it is a discussion of its grammar that makes no sense. It would make more sense to point that out and queiry just what the writer meant. There most certainly is deliberate handling that is not cautionable. There are criteria to be met for a caution to be issued. Here is what is in the 2011-2012 LOTG
My point: ALL handbills are deliberate or it isn't a handball. Thus, the phrase "deliberate handball" is redundant. If you are speaking of a run-of-the-mill handball, you just say handball - deliberate is part of the definition. Hackett's use of the phrase is clear indication that he means something more than run-of-the-mill handball.
Or Hacket could just be paraphrasing the part of the law that says From what he says, I think you are reading too much into it. He does NOT say cautionable criteria are met. At least 2 is easier. The scorer was described as in an offside position when the ball was last touched or played by his team mate. No goal.
It isn't Hackett that writes the questions though. They are sent in by the readers and then put into the strip by Trevillion. It has been noted a few times in Hackett's responses that he usually doesn't come into it until after the strip is written, painted and ready for printing. And this is, IMO, the biggest flaw of you are the ref, the questions is too often posed in such a way that no useful (and certainly no clear) answer is to be had from it.
Hey, what it they did a version of “You Are The Ref”, but for Calvinball? Readers could send in questions, and some “authority” would attempt to answer them in an ostensibly serious fashion, in sort of a surrealist parody of the concept. Somebody get Bill Watterson on the line...
When I read the question I interpreted it the way Sport Billy did - that the questioner was using sloppy language to describe a clearly tactical handling offense worthy of a caution under most circumstances.
This highlights one of the flaws in the presentation from a serious referee perspective (which, of course, is not the purpose for which the Guardian publishes it). The Guardian doesn't want a treatise from Hackett, it just wants a sentence for an answer -- which means questions that don't have enough information or are misleading are often answered by assuming facts (and not necessarily stating the assumptions being made).
Now that I am awake, I'm think the first part of my post is fine and the second part is wrong. I agree with what you have here.
These "You Are The Ref" scenarios are always intended to provide you with a dilemma. The way the question is worded, and based on the intent of the column, it is clear what the writer is going for. In this case, he wants to know what you will do if you give advantage for a cautionable offense, and then the same player commits a second cautionable offense before you can penalize the first one. If you want to avoid the question, be my guest, but then you're missing the point of the exercise. If the answer were that simple, then why put it in the strip?
Hackett doesn't write the questions. Trevillion writes what he gets from fans. Hackett just gives his answers. Or at least i'm hoping that's the case, based on the wording of some of these questions sometimes!
Can't edit. Here is Hackett's verdict: Same as mine except he doesn't caution the defender in #2. Sadly (and off topic), all the posts above nitpicking about the word "deliberate," and completely missing the point of the exercise, has become rather typical of this forum.
IMO the really sad part in this is that "you are the ref" has, by once again being careless with its wording, told the British public that deliberately handling the ball is a mandatory caution and thus helped perpetuate that myth. I'm sure that all British Sunday league referees are very grateful.
I'm not so sure about Hackett's answer to #2 here: “As always, punish the first offence. The defender has not physically manhandled the forward into an offside position: the forward was already in an offside position before the defender blocked him. So declare him offside when he plays the ball…” But it's not an offense to be in an offside position. The offside offense couldn't have occurred until AFTER the impeding offense. I suppose you could say that doesn't matter and the impeding was trifling, since the player was offside when the ball was played, but then you'd have to be certain that the player could not have gotten onside before the kick. But it's still an offense to impede an offside player, so if you're going with “punish the first offense”, it seems to me that you'd have to call the impeding rather than the offside. As for the “deliberate handling” bit—it's not just a matter of nitpicking in this case. I think that simply taking the question at face value, you're not looking at a cautionable offense here. If they wanted to specify that the handling was cautionable, they could have said that in the question by changing the wording to “commits a cautionable handball”. Then, if we were arguing about what constitutes a cautionable handling offense, that would be nitpicking and missing the point of the exercise, because again, taking the question at face value you'd have to assume that whatever the offense was, it merited a caution. Anyway, handling is overcalled as it is. Referring to a “deliberate handball” is not only redundant, it reinforces the idea that there is some lesser standard for calling a handling offense.