Question Number: 25761

Law 5 - The Referee 11/21/2011

RE: club Under 11

ivan martinez of San Diego, ca usa asks...

There was a situation where the ball went out of bound close to the corner flags. It was unclear wether it was a corner or a throwing for us. We placed the ball on the corner and took a corner kick. the ball was kicked and was touched by several players in the box. Eventually the ball got cleared by a defender and rolled toward the center of the field. My defender then ran to the ball and took a shot little past the center circle, The shot went in and we scored. Then the ref stopped play and said no goal because it was a throwing and not a corner. The play took a good 10-15 seconds to develop and he never blew the whistle to clarify if it was a corner or throwing. Is the ref allowed to change their mind when such time has elapsed from the start of play?

Answer provided by Referee Michelle Maloney

Allowed? Yes. Is this the recommended procedure and timing? No.

The referee can call back a restart if s/he has made the decision it was wrong before the ball is put into play - this means if in the referee's head, s/he realized the restart was a throw and not a corner, but didn't get the whistle to the mouth in time to announce it before the kick was taken, the decision had been made to change the restart BEFORE the ball was put into play.

Now, with so much time elapsed, the referee should probably have just swallowed the whistle and let the play go. But they didn't and that is that, unfortunately.

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

It was certainly not a good procedure. Someone goofed up something. If the wrong restart is taken, the ref should stop play immediately and have the proper restart taken. It shouldn't take 10-15 seconds to realize this, and the ref shouldn't wait until another stoppage.

If it was supposed to be a throw-in, then the correct restart was never taken and the goal should not be allowed. But as Ref Maloney says, if the ref waited a long time before realizing it was the incorrect restart, then perhaps it is best to just let things be.

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Ivan
Poor mechanics here by the referee. The referee under the Laws of the Game is entitled to change a restart provided there has not been another restart in the meantime. Where there has been another restart the referee cannot go back and the opportunity has passed
Now the mechanics of this would be that the referee would ask for the proper restart immediately and that would certainly be within a second or two. Asking for a proper restart after allowing play to continue for 10 - 15 seconds with quite a number of touches in the meantime would rarely if ever happen except where the referee has missed a flag by an assistant. From your description there would not appear to be an AR present.
The FIFA Referee Committee has declared that it is impossible for the referee to act when play has continued for an extended period and play should simply continue.
So yes the referee was entitled to do what he did. However it was poor mechanics and it should not have happened causing match control issues for the referee.

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

While the referee is 'allowed' to do this, far too much time has elapsed and this becomes very poor mechanics. If he was going to disallow the corner and go with a throw-in, it should have been done within a few seconds of the taking of the corner.