Question Number: 32422

Law 7 - The Duration of the Match 5/3/2018

RE: Professional

Trevor phillips of Preston, lancashire United Kingdom asks...

In the first half of a game there has been no injuries substitutions or time wasting, then in the 44th minute a player is injured and it takes 5 minutes before the game can restart. My question is, on the restart how lond does the referee play. In my opinion it should be just 1 minute as 44 mins had already been played.

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

HI Trevor,
there is nothing wrong with your logic, if indeed there is one minute left to play then one minute is all that is required to be added once the injury situation is resolved. If there is more than 1 minute then the referee is adding time for something that occurred within the first 44. As it is a discretionary opinion for adding on wasted time it could be for slow play on restarts or ball kicked well out into touch. Only the official can tell you with certainty!
Cheers .

Answer provided by Referee Peter Grove

Hi Trevor,
When a player is injured, what the referee does in effect (if not in actuality) is stop the watch to allow for the treatment to take place. If, when the referee stopped the watch there was one minute of playing time left, when the watch is restarted there is still only one minute to play.

Although the phrase is commonly used, it is something of a misconception to say that the referee 'adds time on' for stoppages. This is not quite the way it works. The law says that allowance is made for time lost and in most cases as I mentioned, this is more in the form of the elapsed game time counter being halted and then restarted when the delay is over. The referee can in a sense, add time on for any excessive time-wasting by players but for many of the stoppages, such as for injury it is more that the watch is stopped and then restarted. The time that passes while the player is injured is not time that needs to be added, it is time that is not counted against the overall running time of the game.

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Trevor
As described the refeee should play one minute from when the game resumes. It makes no difference how long the game has been stopped. Indeed if an ambulance had to be called which took say 30 minutes plus the referee would restart the game and see out the first half by playing one minute.
At lower levels of the game a referee might decide that if say by the time the player is assessed that he might in fact end the half and begin the 15 minutes of the half time interval. Both teams probably would not have a problem with that as 45 minutes has expired and it is the referees discretion anyway how much added time is played. The game then restarts with the second half.