Question Number: 26587

Law 5 - The Referee 7/30/2012

RE: competitive Under 14

John of Perth, WA Australia asks...

I witnessed a situation yesterday when a defender passed the ball back to goalkeeper who then picked it up. The referee stopped the game to award an indirect free kick for the attacking team only to give it to the defending team. Apparently a defender claimed a forward touched the ball and the refereee penalised the forward for ungentlmanly conduct for not admitting he touched the ball. Is this a correct decision?

Thanks

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

What? Not even sure where to start with this one.
If a teammate of the keeper deliberately kicks the ball to the keeper or to a place where the keeper may collect the ball, the keeper may not subsequently handle the ball .
Apparently that happened here. If the ball is touched by an opponent first, then the keeper may handle the ball.
But a defender should not be able to influence the referee's decision. If events transpired as you describe, what on earth was this referee thinking? The referee may change a decision upon receiving information from one of his crew but not from a player. And he should never awarded the defending team an IDFK as no one on the attacking team committed USB

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi John
There are a number of matters here where the referee stepped outside the application of the Law to make a decision.
First off it was either a deliberate kick by a team mate to the goalkeeper or it was not. Referee accept additional information from assistant referees or from the 4th official but not from players. Why he would influenced by a player's information on a decision that is advantageous to that team is beyond me.
Secondly there is no onus on players to admit to fouls or technical fouls. Yes there are examples of players showing good sportsmanship by admitting honestly to a referee that the decision was in error. Referees though need to be careful with those though as he needs to ensure that it is done for sportsmanship reasons only. If the touch was missed by the referee perhaps it did not happen?
Thirdly as the referee changed his mind because he made an 'erroneous' decision the only possible restart is a dropped ball. The only possible way here for an IDFK restart is that the attacking player committed an IDFK offence while the ball was in play or an offence which merited a caution. An example would be shouting at the goalkeeper to distract him which is a caution and an IDFK restart. However in this case once the whistle went, play had stopped and it is not possible for the attacking team to commit an offence while the ball is out of play which would merit a free kick restart. Misconduct can be committed with the ball out of play but that does change the restart and if the restart is to be changed then the only possible decision is the correct restart or a dropped ball. In this situation the only possible restart is a dropped ball.

Answer provided by Referee Jason Wright

Hmm, this is a weird one.

About a year ago I was refereeing Futsal, and the same law applies regarding passing back tot he keeper. I was certain a defender kicked it to the keeper, and blew the whistle - much to the surprise of the players. The defender insisted he didn't touch it, as you'd expect, so I didn't pay a lot of attention to that. Then, however, an attacker said that he was the one who kicked it.

Considering the nature of the match and the incident, I felt my only option was to concede that perhaps I didn't see what I thought I saw, thanked the attacker for his sportsmanship, then restarted play with a drop ball.

I only mention this, John, because I wonder if something similar has happened here - that the attacker admitted a touch? That's the only thing that would make any sense here - that perhaps something like this occurred, and the defence have misunderstood what the referee said regarding that. I can't think of anything else that makes sense, other than a referee who may be in dire need of some mentoring.

Of course, the restart would then be a drop ball, and you cannot penalise a player for not admitting a touch/foul