Do you have any recommendations on dealing with it? It's come up three times this weekend. I thought this had died out: apparently not.
I've never had it happen to me, but I do have the habit of watching the ball closely on the non-AR corners. If/when a team tries to pull it off, I'll be ready (for at least 2 of the 4 corner arcs).
If in your opinion the kick was taken, it was taken. If not, it wasn't. The Law change las year to "clearly moved" was designed to stop the uncertainty and makes it easier for the ref to say it wasn't taken. (Does anyone think Rooney would have agreed the kick had been taken if an opponent ran in and took the ball?)
This^^^^^ The added language made this an easy call. Your parenthetical demonstrates why this "trick" was always such bullshit. Players wanted to be tricky, but only in cases where it worked out for them. If it didn't, they'd scream to the ref to bail them out.
Exactly. Has anyone noticed some referees now wanting this to be a caution as well? I talk to some people that now say if the teams do this play it’s also a caution. I think that’s nonsense as the punishment is likely either the defense coming in to challenge or more likely a double touch when the second player dribbles away.
I think the argument for a caution is if there is an attempt to confuse the defense by saying "Leave it, I'll take the kick", or something like that. I've never been sold on it. I did a high school girls playoff game where a team did the play successfully, although it really played out more like a short corner. The opposing coach was mad at his team for not marking the second player that came in. I got the feeling he was aware that the team used that ploy or just used short corners. I will guarantee that I watched every subsequent corner very closely to make sure they didn't double touch any corners where they weren't using the strategy.
Code1390 brings up a great point. If nothing else, it reminds us to watch corners closely. What do the players do? Does the first player touch it twice? How do you determine which kick put it in play? Did the second player make the mistake of touching it with his hand and then trying it? Obviously either handling or double touch. I've heard of AR's being more involved in these moments, too, telling the second player "not in play", etc. Definitely not necessary, but not a terrible idea.
I had players tell me that this is their intention when I was AR. It's smart on their part to alert the official, that way there is no mistake that this is the intended play.
I'm frankly not interested in what they might want to tell me. The addition of "clearly" to Law 17 was precisely intended to make sure it was clear when the ball is in play. I'm going to look at the objective behaviors, not rely on their subjective intent and desire to hide from the other team whether the ball is in play.
It took me a while to learn not to allow myself to get distracted by the drop zone and turn my attention entirely away from the corner kick when there's another attacker anywhere in the vicinity of the corner.
That's the hardest part about this shenanigans, though. Because the fact that we have to worry about being distracted by where our attention should absolutely be puts a wrench in things. Tough priorities.
I had a coach alert me to this new trick play they'd come up with. I stopped him midway through and said I'd seen it, if they did it correctly, it's fine. He seemed a little deflated that his team wasn't the first to use it.