Question Number: 25767

Law 5 - The Referee 11/22/2011

RE: rec Adult

alex of richmond hill, ontario canada asks...

There is a situation in the UCL game today between Bayern and Villarreal. Team A (cannot remember which team)player was fouled and injured on the ground. Ref award a DFK. Team A did a quick re-start and obviously the ref let the play proceed while the player is still on the ground. Team B won the ball maybe a minute later after several plays and proceed with their own attack. Now team A asked the ref to stop the game because of their injured player. Is it fair and correct for the ref to stop the game now as it seems that team A only wants to stop when the other team is attacking?

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Alex
Once a team ignores a team mate down on the field of play then it has decided that the injury is not serious. Once play restarts the referee then waits until the next stoppage to deal with the minor injury. If the referee decides that it is a serious injury he should not allow play to restart or stop play immediately

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

If the player wasn't seriously hurt while his team was on the attack, he probably still wasn't hurt while the other team was on the counter-attack.

The only way I can see this being anywhere near valid is if the player was down for only a very short time while the attack continued, and just about the time the ref decided the player might have been seriously injured the counter-attack started. But not after an attack of a minute or so.

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

His teammates decided the injury was nor serious and the referee agreed or he would not have allowed a quick restart. It is doubtful that over a minute later the injury now became serious.