NFHS rules

As stated this is a clear step away from other governing bodies and the argument is still valid that if you can move to protect you can move entirely.

Now that you have posted this section I ask again, are we supposed to view this a specific light when officiating men vs women.

So would the chest only apply in women’s and the groin in men’s. Seems a pointlessly stupid distinction which is going to create more inconsistency in the game which shouldn’t be there. It’s one game, men or women.

Opening these loopholes is a bad precedent which inevitably leads to having to close them later.

 

So an inherently inconsistent change then..?

I ref NFHS too. And while I don’t always agree with their rule differences I apply them when I am officiating under their rules.

The problem is I feel like they go out of their way to find ways to make little inconsistencies which just create confusion. This would be a case.

 

What I'm going on about is that the Situations (at least the wall one) precisely take common sense (i.e. judgement) out of the picture--IF wall THEN you can move your hand into the path of the ball (my phrase). The open play one says IF hard shot THEN you can move your hand into the path of the ball.

These "simplifications" are a far cry from the referee deciding whether the reaction is instinctive. That is a simpler judgement. What is a "Hard shot or pass," exactly?

Look I get that NFHS is attempting to put a tighter bound around what we should (not) call but my whole point is that by their very wording they have virtually guaranteed there is going to more contention around this than before.

And as for my Arbiter comment, I forgot the /s.

 

Agreed, it's gone from bad to also bad.

Better would be: A player (wall, open play, whatever) reflexively moves his/her arm to protect (body part). RULING: No infraction.

Wall is not a condition, hard pass is not a condition, reflexively is THE condition. And the referee can decide without quibbling over chapter and verse.

 

Again, get out of the way? Works just as well if not better than throwing a different part of your body in the path.

 

Oh no, I’m far too slow for that to be the truth. But I am just as slow getting out of the way as I am getting my arms up. So my arms don’t get hit when I can’t move my head fast enough. I take it on the noggin.

 

What governing bodies are you thinking of? I've never seen anything from IFAB/FIFA that undercuts the long held (at least since I first reffed in the 70s) concept that instinctive protection is not deliberate. (It was very explicit in the ATR.) From the guidance in Law 12, we have the interplay of "hand towards the ball" and "distance between the opponent and the ball (unexpected ball)." Referees must use judgment to weigh the two factors and determine, in an age and skill appropriate way, which factor weighs heavier on a particular play. I see this change as NFHS aligning with the rest of the world.

 

IFAB. I see you fitting a square peg in a round hole.

You have one and only one part of the law that even remotely gives you an excuse to not call handling when the hand moves to the ball and makes contact. And that is the distance criteria.

Which comes after the movement bullet point. No where in the laws does it state players may move their arms to protect themselves. Protecting ones self isn’t a consideration.

Unless someone has come out with new videos the ones I have seen in recent years have shown movement of the hand/arm into the path of the ball as handling.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. It's not a peg issue, it's the meaning of deliberate--you want to take one criteria ans say it is the only one that matters, which I believe is simply incorrect as there are multiple criteria that are to be considered and weighed. But you are also twisting what I've said. I have never said that players may deliberately move arms to protect themselves. I have said--and I have never seen any guidance to the contrary other than NFHS--that instinctive protection is not deliberate. USSF made that explicit, but it was a time worn concept long before it appeared in the ATR. Instinctive in this context means without thought or deliberation--if the player had the opportunity to make a decision, it is not instinctive protection. The entire concept of handling is to punish those who deliberately use their hands or arms on the ball. That is not what is happening when a player instinctively protects himself.

Do you see it in TV games? No. Because those are professional players who have instincts honed against using their arms. (The only time it would likely happen, I think, is a player who was on the ground getting up and had a ball come from close range.)

 

I don’t see how I twisted anything. You asked which governing bodies are instructing this. I answered. I won’t doubt you on whether there was verbiage about protecting yourself in the past. You could be right.

Fact of the matter is that isn’t in the laws any longer. And based on the video like the one on US Soccers site by Esse the onus is on the defenders to make contact with something other than the hand or arm.

The fact of the matter is there are a lot of really effective ways to play the game, but they are illegal. Raising the knee by keepers is another example, effective as hell at protecting yourself, but it’s illegal so you can’t do it.

Using your arms to block your head is a somewhat effective strategy, but so is moving out of the way. One involves moving the hands or arms into the path of the ball, which is illegal, the other doesn’t.

If you have some sort of official guidance that lists protecting yourself as a criteria please pass it along. Until then I don’t see it as a consideration when there are other options available to the player.

 

As I said, we're going to agree to disagree. Again lacking in your post is the critical word--instinctive. We agree that players cannot deliberately use their hands/arms to protect themselves. The whole point of instinctive protection is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with making a decision--that is why, in some cases, the hard and fast bullet trumps the hand to ball bullet. You want to hang your hat solely on the bullet about hand to ball, and ignore the one about close and hard. OK. But I think this is a fundamental misreading of Law 12. And you haven't provided any reference to a teaching that contradicts my interpretation. (As to express guidance in the past, it was in black and white in every edition of the ATR.)

I can't point you to a current official document/video on this, but Dan Heldman, who took over Jim Allen's site, answered a related question a couple of months ago, and explained

Both by general interpretation and, since the 2016-2017 Laws of the Game, by more explicit guidance, a handling offense should not be called if the contact was: . . .

• entirely defensive (i.e., an involuntary response to perceived danger to any part of the body that could be painfully harmed by contact with the ball)

​

http://www.askasoccerreferee.com/the-law-is-generally-genderless/

Esse's video about taking chances is a wholly different ball of wax from which I think you are extrapolating far too much. The essence of that teaching (which did, I agree, expand the concept of deliberate) is that when a player chooses to go into that slide, the player takes responsibility for the chance that his arm is in the way. That is completely and totally different from a player who unthinkingly throws an arm in front of his or her face when a ball is rapidly approaching without warning. (And, as discussed, how rapid/close that has to be is heavily age/skill dependent, which is why it is rarely, if ever, seen at the professional level--which is why it is not a topic Esse is going to deal with in training top referees.)

 

At this point we are arguing in circles. You say provide something that says instinctive movement isn’t allowed, I say provide something that says it is.

You say it used to be in the ATR, I say it’s no longer in the LOTG, which is the only one remaining.

Let’s get back to the nexus of the issue, the NFHS wording.

If you want to argue that an instinctual reaction is not deliberate I can buy into that, at least on a purely grammatical basis. But on that basis, an instinctual reaction, which is neither predicated or dependent on any protection. An instinctual reaction for me would be less likely to bring the hands all the way up to the face. More of a flinch where the hands go to no specific location. Moving the hands to the face has some thought behind it, whether is be subconscious or not there is a thought behind the move.

The NFHS wording removes any of that and DEEMS it as a reflex. It doesn’t say judge anything, it says protecting ones head chest or groin is a reflex. There is no judgement to be done.

“A player, who is part of a wall in a free kick, moves the hands after the kick to protect his/her face from the ball.

The hand movement is deemed to be a reflex action and is not considered to be deliberate handling. Protecting the head, face, groin or chest from a hard shot or pass using the hands or arms as a reflex is not considered deliberate and therefore not handling.”

Perhaps that is just poor wording on the part of NFHS, which I grant you is entirely possible, but as it stands it sure as hell removes a lot, if not all, of the referees ability to judge the situation.

Still waiting on if the chest is isolated to Women’s matches and the groin to men’s, but that is a whole different ball of wax. Based on this reading below it sure seems like we have gender based rules now.

“A2 kicks a low hard pass to his/her teammate; (a) B2, a male player who is in the path of the ball, moves his hand to protect his groin and the ball touches his hand; (b) B2, a female player who is in the path of the ball, moves her hand to protect her chest and the ball touches her hand.

Legal in both (a) and (b). Protecting the head, face, groin and chest from a hard shot or pass using the hands or arms as a reflex is not considered deliberate and therefore not handling.”

 

And I did. See the quote block in my last post.

And I explained how it is in the current Law 12, which requires the referee to weigh the listed factors, not pay only attention to one of them. (Instinctive protection has, so far as I recall, never been expressly in the LOTG--it has always been, and I posit still is, inherent in the concept of deliberate.)

You don't accept that, fine.

But I don't do NFHS, so I don't have to parse their convoluted writing. (Though I would posit that the reason the committee made the change was the please from the soccer referees to conform to the rest of the world, and were I doing HS games, I would now interpret it exactly the same as the LOTG.)

 

Dang I hate to get into this discussion, but ... why am I remembering some guidance or whatnot from a few years back that suggested that if players in the wall put their hands in a protective position before the ball was kicked and ball-hand contact ensued, that was not deliberate handling, but if the hand was moved after the kick, say to protect the face, then it was? Was that the ATR? A memo? A dream memory?

 

Are you referring to the section from Heldman? Where is he getting that? And does he have some sort of authority to make such an assertion.

I’m not trying to be snarky, I’m honestly asking.

 

Yes. His bio is on the site somewhere.

 

I think I did indeed misremember that. This is from the 2012 ATR, which is the oldest I have ready to hand:

 

This one caught my attention. I used to see this tactic a lot by keepers when I started reffing, but have not seen it much recently. Then I saw it in a chippy adult mens game last week and thought to myself - if he makes contact, all hell is gonna break loose. Wonder what I would call?

I have never seen anything specifically forbidding (or allowing) this tactic. Logic says it is his space and he can put his body part where he wants. And then a brawl will ensue......

Where is this regulated?

 

The action specifically isn’t called out but it would be akin to going up for a header with your elbows out. Sure it’s great for keeping space but it’s an inherently dangerous maneuver to put a hard surface of the body out to make contact with someone. You take the risk upon yourself if you play in this manner.

 

The weird thing about the whole protection/handling scenario for me is I just took my recert test which explicitly said in the instructions that it was based on ‘17-‘18 guidance. There were two questions that related to the new guidance. I got them both wrong. I’m sooooooo confooooooosed.

 

It's true that the LotG don't explicitly address this but the meanings of the respective words and the laws of logic mean that it is implicit. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of 'instinctive' is "Relating to or prompted by instinct; done without conscious thought."

If something is done without conscious thought, then by definition it cannot be deliberate.