Question Number: 20272

Law 11 - Offside 10/15/2008

RE: Competitive. Under 13

Howard Egan of Capitola, CA USA asks...

This question is a follow up to question 20256

Thanks for the responses. All of them are sensible, but the fundamental question remains. If you don't actually see or hear when the ball is last played by the attacking team, should you call offside when the involved player moves into an offside position?

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

I wrote this in the first response
'I suggest to ARs that when in doubt you DO NOT wave it about. A late correct flag is far better than an early one so wait and see. But if the initial evaluation for position is flawed no decision that follows is likely going to shine brightly in the atta boy column. '

The mechanic of an offside positioned player recieving a ball where the AR is NOT sure the flag ALWAYS stays down. If you don't know who played the ball, you cannot call offside. If the offside player ends up scoring a goal, you stand at attention get eye contact with the referee and signal we need to talk. Then you can state what you know: 'The player was in an offside position, but I didn't see who kicked the ball to him.' The referee then decides the result base on what he knows added with your information.

Cheers

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

We had a very similar question from Santa Cruz; perhaps this was the same game? In that question I answered nearly exactly the same as Ref Dawson did here. Really, we didn't copy from each other!