Question Number: 27243

Law 7 - Match Duration 3/13/2013

RE: Competitive Adult

Alan Pleaden of Birmingham, West Midlands United Kingdom asks...

My team is currently competing for honours near the top of our division. Another team close by us beat the team bottom of our division 31-0. Is there a rule that a game has to be abandoned after so many goals because I was told in the past that it did if one team was winning by 22 goals.

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Alan
No such Law in the Laws of the Game. I do know that some Underage Leagues have what is called a 'slaughter' competition rule regarding the deduction of a point but it never results in an abandonment.
What can happen is that the losing team decides that it does not want to continue playing in which case the referee has no choice but to abandon. That though is NEVER the referee's decision and he just continues to referee until the final whistle or to when one team decides not to continue.
From a football point of view I would say these 'slaughter' games do neither side any benefit and that a team that is winning by such a huge margin should change its playing behaviour by weakening the team or by working on passing routines rather than a focus on continuing to score multiple goals.

Answer provided by Referee Jason Wright

Hi Alan,

The laws of the game do not provide for such a ruling.

I would be very surprised if any competition has such a ruling in place, as it would be against the laws of the game if it were. If you've heard otherwise it may be just a rumour, or it may have evolved from some other variant of the game using unofficial rules (such as an underage league or an unaffiliated competition or tournament).

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

Here in the US there are many Leagues that have adopted 'slaughter' or 'mercy killing' limits as to how badly a team is allowed to be beaten. I haven't checked recently but one local League had a 10 goal rule. If a team was up by 10 goals at any time, the game would be stopped. It got better, or worse. If this happened in the first half or with something like at least 20 minutes remaining in the second half, not only would the game be stopped but the teams would swap players and continue the game. I can attest that ALL the players and parents hated this. The only person at the one match I was unfortunate to work under these rules that thought this a good idea, was the winning coach.

Of course, this is not allowed in the LOTG and was only done at the lower age levels of recreational play.