PK or Play on

[Kansas]

Situation:
U-17 Boys Forward (blue) dribbles into PA is fouled but maintains ball and has opportunity to continue and a shot from 12 yards (I shout play on-advantange), player decides not to take shot, and goes left. defender that origninally fouled him catches back up and go shoulder to shoulder, blue goes down/dives. What is your decision?

[njref]

Situation:
U-17 Boys Forward (blue) dribbles into PA is fouled but maintains ball and has opportunity to continue and a shot from 12 yards (I shout play on-advantange), player decides not to take shot, and goes left. defender that origninally fouled him catches back up and go shoulder to shoulder, blue goes down/dives. What is your decision?

Calling out advantage in the PA is usually ill-advised ( per Jim Allen). Especially where a 12 yard shot is needed to score. If possible based on time elapsed, I would determine no advantage after all and give PK. The better procedure is to use a silent play-on/advantage, allow a goal or easy shot and otherwise whistle for PK if no advantage after all. Sorry, I am too lazy right now to refer you to JA's exact words.....

[hradilv]

Calling out advantage in the PA is usually ill-advised ( per Jim Allen). Especially where a 12 yard shot is needed to score. If possible based on time elapsed, I would determine no advantage after all and give PK. The better procedure is to use a silent play-on/advantage, allow a goal or easy shot and otherwise whistle for PK if no advantage after all. Sorry, I am too lazy right now to refer you to JA's exact words.....
Sounds right to me. The mistake was shouting the play-on. Usually the PK is much more of an advantage than any other. Also, I'd like to add that I hope, in your situation, after making the advantage call, that you gave the attacker a yellow card for simulating a foul, and gave the defender a stern talking to for getting away with the original foul.

Cheers,
Vince

[Guy Fawkes]

It's a good question. I'd only give advantage if it looked pretty much certain the player would be able to score.

[MassachusettsRef]

Yeah, no offense intended but the mistake is yours. It's nearly impossible for a play 12-yards out during dynamic play where a defender can catch up that quickly to be advantageous to a PK.

That being said, once you make that error and the situation develops as you stated, how do you fix--or at least salvage--it? I say you have two options:

If it happened quickly enough and the foul was obvious enough, you cop to your mistake, say the advantage was never realized (or never really existed), and you give the PK. You have to have a firm grasp of the match and confidence in the players' reactions to get away with this now, though. Everyone has to know there was an initial foul and people can't be seen as believing you fell for the subsequent dive on the second incident. Also, you likely can only pull this off if the foul exhibited more physicality than the subsequent shoulder-to-shoulder incident--otherwise, it will just look really, really bad.

If you can't pull that off, I say you just wave play on. Don't book the player for diving (that'd just be cruel), but just tell everyone to keep going. You're likely to only hear real complaints from the player himself--even though he'd be in the right.

[o5iiawah]

Sounds like the player shaking the defender, dribbling left and the defender catching up happened in more than 2 seconds.

In the open field, I interpret advantage as basically keeping the ball, or passing it to a clearly open attacker. Still, i think the ATR says that advantage should be a 2 to at most, 3 second decision.

I would say in your instance, if the ball isn't on its way to the back of the net by the start of the 3rd second, you whistle for the penalty.

[refmedic]

The decision is to award the PK. Whether to apply advantage in the PA or not is something that we could have an entire thread on, if there hasn't been one already, but I'm going to agree with Mr. Allen and say that it is a rare circumstance to play advantage in the PA. You played the advantage and then the advantage didn't develop. Whistle for the original foul and then award a penalty.

There is an interesting issue that comes up with this, though. Dr. Evans writes an entire chapter on advantage in his book, and the Law nuances of this sitiuation are interesting, even though the result will probably be the same, but an astute (and anal) assessor might bring this up. If you are going to play the advantage, you need to signal to play-on and IMO, say either "play on" or "advantage". If the advantage doesn't materialize then you can whistle for the initial foul. Technically, if you don't play the advantage and signal for it, you can't call it back. For you to determine a foul is trifling, (not playing advantage but still not calling it), you have decided a different thing. Rather than recognizing a foul and allowing the player to try to play through it, you are recognizing something that could be considered foul, but at that particular level, in that particular game, it's trifling. If you go the trifling route, and then the play doesn't materialze, it doesn't suddenly make the contact not trifling anymore, and you're stuck allowing play to continue. If you are going to play the advantage, then signal for the advantage, and give yourself the ability to either not whistle for anything at all or award the penalty for the original foul. Like I said, really hypertechnical, but I would hate to see someone get a talking to by an assessor for awarding the penalty for the first foul after not signaling for advantage. This happened to me once, and even though I think he was making the situation bigger than it needed to be, after reading up on it, he was technically correct.

[refereejoe]

There is no such thing as a "silent advantage." You either decide there is no foul, the foul is trifling, or a foul occurred. If a foul occurred, you decide either to play advantage or whistle the foul. Either way, you must take action at that point in time.

Shouting for advantage is the same signal as whistling, the only difference being whether play stops or continues.

In this case, you made the decision that a foul occurred and that the attacker had a greater advantage for play to continue instead of stopping for a penalty. That was the wrong decision.

However, there was no subsequent action that caused the advantage to not materialize. The attacker made a decision on his own accord (perhaps a bad one as well) to not attempt a shot on goal. He allows the defender to catch up with him and make a legal challenge, and then simulates a foul instead.

Unfortunate for the attacker, but at this point you cannot go back and award the penalty. Technically, you could stop play for misconduct and caution the attacker for unsporting behavior, though it would not be in the best interest of game management to do so.

I'll side with MassRef in that you do nothing. Referees should not fabricate reasons to award or penalize in an attempt to correct a previous mistake (aka, a "make-up call")

[DWickham]

The current USSF teaching on advantage for fouls against defenders inside their own penalty area is very much like "silent advantage." The April 2008 Position Paper on Advantage and The Penalty Area includes two notions relevant to our discussion:

1. Advantage has been applied when the decision is made, not when the advantage signal is given. The signal itself may often be delayed for 2-3 seconds while the referee evaluates the advantage situation to determine if it will continue.

2. Inside the penalty area, the competitive tension is much greater and the referee is alled upon to make quicker decisions. The time during which the referee looks for advantage to continue becomes defined by the probability of scoring a goal directly following the foul or from the subsequent play.

The time for the referee to revoke the advantage and call the penalty kick foul arrived as soon as it became clear the attacker was not going to shoot.

[andymoss]

Situation:
U-17 Boys Forward (blue) dribbles into PA is fouled but maintains ball and has opportunity to continue and a shot from 12 yards (I shout play on-advantange), player decides not to take shot, and goes left. defender that origninally fouled him catches back up and go shoulder to shoulder, blue goes down/dives. What is your decision?

Seems pretty simple to me.

Attacker fouled.

You signal play on/advantage.

Player decides not to take the shot.

Advantage over and we're on to a new phase of play.

If he then flings himself to the ground, wave him up and keep going.

[refontherun]

Seems pretty simple to me.

Attacker fouled.

You signal play on/advantage.

Player decides not to take the shot.

Advantage over and we're on to a new phase of play.

If he then flings himself to the ground, wave him up and keep going.

This is an option, but I tend to favor some of the earlier posts.

In a situation like this, hopefully I'm close enough to give a verbal indication (i.e. "keep it going") just loud enough for the players involved to know I saw something, but I'm allowing a few seconds (2-3) to see what develops before awarding the PK. That avoids the public announcement of advantage, but still lets the players on both sides know that your on top of it. Then, when you do make your final decision, you have less chance of having to deal with dissent from either the players or the sidelines.

[andymoss]

For me, that fact that the OP states that the attacker "decides not to take a shot" as opposed to "the foul sufficiently impeded the attacker that he was unable to get a shot off" is the key.

Depends why he decided not to shoot of course. If it was because the foul slowed him down, allowed other defenders to get back, etc., then sure, blow for the kick. If he just kept going, trying to get into a better position, that's his perogotive and I'd say this is advantage over.

[Ref Flunkie]

Expaned question: Had the OP not yelled for advantage, would you really go back to give the PK if the player kept going, held onto the ball for too long, and then took a dive?

[chrisrun]

Depends why he decided not to shoot of course. If it was because the foul slowed him down, allowed other defenders to get back, etc., then sure, blow for the kick. If he just kept going, trying to get into a better position, that's his perogotive and I'd say this is advantage over.

So what advantage materialized for the attacker that was better than a PK?

[andymoss]

So what advantage materialized for the attacker that was better than a PK?

A lot of this is HHTBT, and I do agree, the foul may have interfered to such a degree that there was no advantage, but taking it to the extreme the other way, say the foul occured, he pushed through it, GK is stranded, no other defender, open goal, yet he still decides not to shoot and then falls over when legally challenged 2 -3 seconds?

PK?

Not being overly arsey or arguementative, but sayin'........

[refereejoe]

So what advantage materialized for the attacker that was better than a PK?The advantage "materialized" by the subsequent unimpeded actions of the attacker. The expected result of the advantage applied does not have to become reality for the advantage to be considered "materialized."

[Guy Fawkes]

Right, but for it to be "advantage", there has to be MORE of a chance of scoring than what would happen if the foul were called. Since a penalty is successful so often, it's got to be a REALLY good position the striker is in for advantage to be called. It is possible, but not all that possible.

[meyers]

I believe one of the main reasons for a "silent advantage" call or rather just waiting a couple seconds to see what transpires, is to prevent the ref from blowing his whistle as the attacker drills the ball into the back of the net. Then trying to tell the attacking team, no that didn't count, now you have to make a PK.

[refontherun]

I believe one of the main reasons for a "silent advantage" call or rather just waiting a couple seconds to see what transpires, is to prevent the ref from blowing his whistle as the attacker drills the ball into the back of the net. Then trying to tell the attacking team, no that didn't count, now you have to make a PK.

Here here!

[OldAndNew]

The key to the 'applying the advantage clause' is that the referee performs two distinct actions.

First, he silently determines that a foul has indeed occured, but he's going to wait 2 or 3 seconds to see if an advantage materializes before announcing his decision. After that 2 or 3 second assessment period, he then announces his decision, which is a choice of:

a) - advantage has not materialized - blow the whistle for the foul
b) - advanatage has materialzed - ANNOUNCE (verbally and by motion) the decision that you are recognizing the foul but granting continuation because an advantage exists.

Too many refs shout 'Advantage' BEFORE they see if it has materialzed, then when it hasn't, they (correctly) stop play to award the free-kick. All that does is to make it quite clear to everybody that he wrongly anticipated what may happen - or made a premature announcement requiring retraction. Neither 'looks' good.

The correct 'announcement' should be "Advantage!", NOT "Play on!" The latter should be reserved only to indicate that NO foul (or other reason for a stoppage) has occured.

Correct: Assess - count to 3 - announce (either whistle, or 'wave' and shout)
Incorrect: Announce ('wave and shout') - count to 3 - assess - announce (whistle, or again 'wave' and shout, or remain silent - hoping players remember you shouted and waved 3 seconds ago!)