I was watching the semifinal between UCLA and Duke and saw UCLA perform two "trick" corner kick plays that I thought were mishandled. In the first (near end of regulation), UCLA player, with foot on top of ball, gives a little kicking motion with the top foot but doesn't appear to lose contact with the ball. A second player comes over and dribbles in towards the PA. In my opinion, either the ball is in play and the first kicker played the ball twice, or the ball was never in play, and the second player was guilty of a second touch. In the second instance, in the first overtime period, two UCLA players are at the corner, and it appears that one player played it to herself. Am I misinterpreting the rule or did I miss something? Mahalo
On the first one, approximately 1:41 in the video, it is a poorly executed trick play. If I saw that I would call is a double touch because of the dribble by the other player. On the second one, approximately 1:45 in the video, it's not a trick play it's a double touch and a pretty blatant one. The AR should have seen that. On the second one,
The second was a blatant double touch. You would like to think a garden variety ref would see that and flag it.At that level absolutely. Yikes.
After the first use of the trick play, as AR I'm watching every corner after that and this one would get flagged for double touch. You can't play it both ways. If the foot on the ball is a legal touch (as in the first one) then the next time it is, too.
Brings up a long held thought of mine- if one assumes the first play is legal, who would call handling if the second player, instead of dribbling, had picked the ball up to reposition it for a regular corner?
If they try to play games with corners I will apply the rules of their game to all subsequent corner kicks. I've only had one high school game that did that kind of corner and they never hinted at doing it again, but I was watching. I was ready to flag a double touch, handling, what ever they did wrong after the play with a foot. It was funny, because they never fiddled with the ball with their feet after that. Always positioned the ball with their hands and then never touched it until the kick. OK, I'll admit it. I really wanted to catch them.
As a college referee, I find this miss for this level of a game to just be horrible. This is the national semi-final. The top level of college crews--particularly since the final has "professionals" on the crew. The second one is on the AR. She sees both touches!!! I expect the CR's focus to be in the GA. A blatant double touch as I've ever seen. If the play ends up with the ball in the net, Duke should have felt aggrieved.