https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/assistant-referee-offside-game-0gjxrnfg6 nice to have a little instruction from mullarkey in the corner after the decision is made
I'd love to take this test in real life. I think I'm a pretty good AR, but the confirmation would be nice.
Yes. As I recall, every single one I missed was thinking they were offside when in fact (as demonstrated by slow-mo replay) they were not. The test was augmented by some stuff about visual processing, i.e. how the brain interpolates positions of moving objects, and how it contributes to this sort of error. The takeaway for me was a very strong confirmation of the "tie goes to the attack" and "if in doubt keep the flag down" mantras. But of course when you're AR1 and the defense's coach is standing right behind you and his wee brain is subject to the same error ...
In the same sense that cats and the air suspension system in my new Jeep have brains - they occasionally do otherwise inexplicable things just to amuse themselves.
I disagree with some of this, mainly because if I say he's offside, he's offside..."ITOOTR" and all that
The biggest takeaway of the test is be sure that you are certain before putting your flag up. With the speed of higher level soccer, its always easy to miss one small piece of information that would show that the player is onside.
It's more than that. It's not just missing a piece of information. If that were so, we would tend to get on- and offside both wrong by similar percentages. But we actually tend to err, as @code1390 guessed above, by "seeing" the moving attacker in the OSP at the critical moment when she's not actually there yet. The way the brain works, it basically fills in some blanks in how we see moving objects, and that tends to make us get it wrong in that way. That's why it's not just "be sure," but also "tie goes to the attack," because the attacker, especially a swiftly moving attacker, will almost always be just onside when your eye tells you she was just off.
Exactly. If you are not sure or even if you think it’s close offside (again with a fast-moving attacker) and you keep your flag down, you’ll be right a lot more often. If the offside line is moving up, even more so. Ultimately, it is less odious to allow an offside attacks to continue than it is to pull good goals out of the net.