19/20 Rd 4

[Capn Gus Bloodbeard]

It makes a mockery of the Broxham handball a few weeks back against Roar but it’s consistent with the one we copped in round 1. As I’ve said previously a harsh but consistently applied rule is tolerable, having a few questionable exceptions like Baccus and Broxham’s efforts undermines that and creates confusion. Not to mention looking totally rigged.

Agree. Most people accepted the 2 decisions in Rd 1 - including ours - based on the assumption it would set a consistent standard. Clearly we haven't had that (and I argued then that the law never intended for ours to be a penalty).
With the clear inconsistency, that means there's a valid argument against any decision made.
Anyway, I think this handball was the wrong decision, and there's a lot of misquoting of the laws going around right now:

It is usually an offence if a player:

• touches the ball with their hand/arm when:
  
  • the hand/arm has made their body unnaturally bigger
    
  • the hand/arm is above/beyond their shoulder level (unless the player deliberately plays the ball which then touches their hand/arm)
    

I added the bold in 'usually'. The presence of that word means that there will be some times - not defined by IFAB - when touching the ball with the arm above shoulder level is not a foul.

So, I'd argue this should be one of those cases. A self protective reflex from point blank range has always been permitted.

Also, there was a very, very clear penalty early in the first half again, by Jets.....stonewall penalty, ref didn't give it and inexplicably VAR was okay with it.
Galloway probably should've had a straight red in the dying minutes too.
All in all, another disaster for the referee and VAR.
Then there's another goal line incident - kinda getting weird now; normally we probably wouldn't have this many across an entire season. Anyway, absolutely nothing to go off to try to call this one a goal, and people complaining about it forget the AR was right in line.

 

[Tevor]

Agree. Most people accepted the 2 decisions in Rd 1 - including ours - based on the assumption it would set a consistent standard. Clearly we haven't had that (and I argued then that the law never intended for ours to be a penalty).
With the clear inconsistency, that means there's a valid argument against any decision made.
Anyway, I think this handball was the wrong decision, and there's a lot of misquoting of the laws going around right now:

It is usually an offence if a player:

• touches the ball with their hand/arm when:
  • the hand/arm has made their body unnaturally bigger
  • the hand/arm is above/beyond their shoulder level (unless the player deliberately plays the ball which then touches their hand/arm)

I added the bold in 'usually'. The presence of that word means that there will be some times - not defined by IFAB - when touching the ball with the arm above shoulder level is not a foul.

So, I'd argue this should be one of those cases. A self protective reflex from point blank range has always been permitted.

Also, there was a very, very clear penalty early in the first half again, by Jets.....stonewall penalty, ref didn't give it and inexplicably VAR was okay with it.
Galloway probably should've had a straight red in the dying minutes too.
All in all, another disaster for the referee and VAR.
Then there's another goal line incident - kinda getting weird now; normally we probably wouldn't have this many across an entire season. Anyway, absolutely nothing to go off to try to call this one a goal, and people complaining about it forget the AR was right in line.

How bizarre is it with goal line decisions in the last three weeks, I made a comment after the first one that it only happens once or twice a season therefore does not warrant the investment. I chuckle to myself every week it has happened since. At least they have been consistent and not given any of them. Totally agree on Galloway's tackle.

 

[Ads]

It was unnatural position but doesn’t the rule say ‘make your body unnaturally larger’.

In this case his hands did not give him a body size advantage at all.

 

[Tevor]

It was unnatural position but doesn’t the rule say ‘make your body unnaturally larger’.

In this case his hands did not give him a body size advantage at all.

Agree, so far this season I'm at about 15% correct with what the VAR and Ref come up with. I think that is mostly as a result of the stark inconsistencies of decisions. At half time they had Georgevski on the Fox panel and he said something along the lines of WSW have had some bad decisions go against them this season, I can not think of any as they are clearly ahead of every team on VAR / Ref dodgy decisions going their way IMO.

 

[Capn Gus Bloodbeard]

It was unnatural position but doesn’t the rule say ‘make your body unnaturally larger’.

In this case his hands did not give him a body size advantage at all.

'body unnaturally larger' is a separate section.
But I think it's safe to say that elbow low and tucked in with the hand technically above the shoulder is not what the law intended - and the law instructs referees to consider the spirit of the game in their application of the law