Question Number: 23160

Law 5 - The Referee 4/22/2010

Mike of New Hyde Park, NY USA asks...

This question is a follow up to question 23146

In both Ref McHugh's response and Ref Wickham's quotation of the US Soccer response the term 'trifling' is used as an explanation of allowing the keeper's actions in this case. I believe the use of trifling is poorly applied in a case like this. Trifling is defined by Merriam-Webster as 'lacking in significance or solid worth.' I can understand how this would be applied to the instance of a keeper taking an extra step or two on a punt or on a foot coming up on a throw in, but a keeper misplaying a pass in the penalty area would rarely seem trifling to an opponent.

I would be interested in how the LOTG would consider such an infraction as trifling.

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Mike
Thanks for your question. In both Referee Wickham's and my replies we both stated that it was an offence punishable by an indirect free kick.
In the scenario given the referee did not punish it and a number of possible explanations were given one of which is that he could have considered it trifling. The situation I envisaged from the question is that the ball was kicked up in the air and both the attacker and the goalkeeper both challenged in the air with the goalkeeper winning the ball. The attacker and his team may have accepted that situation without debate and the referee allowed play to continue. Perhaps they did not even know the law or they believed that the ball was 'put back into play' and they fully expected the GK to use her hands.
If the attacking team believed that it was a clear offence and they wanted it punished then the referee may have done so. .
I recall a Ladies game end of last season and it was a wet day. Reds were losing 0-3 and the red goalkeeper trying to get the ball back into play quickly with a punt allowed the ball to slip out of her hands to the ground. She immediately picked it up and then punted it into play. Now that is an IDFK offence, It was not called and the the opponents made nothing off the incident. Was it trifling?

Answer provided by Referee Michelle Maloney

In 1997, before the "great rewrite of the LOTG", Law 5, said under "Decisions of the International F.A. Board #8) The Laws of the Game are intended to provide that games should be played with as little interference as possible (from the referee), and in this view it is the duty of referees to penalise only deliberate breaches of the Law. Constant whistling for trifling and doubtful breaches produces bad feeling and loss of temper on the part of the players and spoils the pleasure of the spectators." This is a tenet of the Laws, which is still true and which referees are taught the world over.

Lacking in significance or solid worth here means the goalkeeper clearly didn't mean to miskick the ball, and her response in catching it was a natural and normal one, not one meant to unfairly disadvantage the other team or done to deliberately breach the Law, and as such was trifling in nature, given the greater scope of the game. If this had happened at the other end of the field, I'm sure the coach and the keeper wouldn't complain either, as they (normally) would have seen this as a 'fair play' no call.

The Laws are written in letters of black and white, but in between those letters are shades of gray, just as there is in the definition you quoted. What is trifling to one person may not be to another - what has little significance to one may be of great worth to another. In this case, both teams could have easily (and should have) drawn the conclusion that the referee wasn't out to play gotcha this game, that s/he intended for whistles to be for offenses against the game which affected the WHOLE game, not just one team or the other. In other words, not calling offenses which in this game, at that time, were trifling in nature.

Had the referee decided to call this particular incident, that is also his/her right, and the right is based in the Law, on the referee's experience, education and feel for the game. Like it or not, the referee is the one who gets to make these decisions. Those decisions are based (hopefully) on a solid background in the game, an excellent working knowledge of the wording and meaning of the LOTG themselves, and the needs of the game and the teams playing it on that day, that field. Do we always get it right? Of course not, but we get it right far many more times than we don't, even if the credit for getting it right isn't recognized. Oddly, it is an adversarial game, and the neutral party gets blamed when the game doesn't go a particular side's way. C'est la vie.

The following questions were asked as a follow up to the above question...

See Question: 23514