Question Number: 15875

Law 11 - Offside 6/24/2007

RE: Under 19

lisa of terrace, bc canada asks...

When linesman sees an offside, does he/she raise the flag or does he/she raise the flag when the ball is passed forward and at that moment is determined by the linesman offside

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

The assistant referee raises his flag to indicate when an offside infraction has occurred. There are two parts to this:

(1) A player is in an offside position at the time the ball is last touched or played by a teammate
--AND--
(2) The player in the offside position becomes involved in play.

BOTH position and involvement must occur before the infraction is called. The AR does not raise the flag until she is convinced that both things happened.

Please see Ref Fleischer's article "Offside Explained" found at the link on the right-hand side of our main page.

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

Hi Lisa,
good advise from my colleagur Ref Voshol. ARs are to hold flags down until they are 100% sure the offside positioned player is actually involved in play. Once convinced the offside positioned player has in fact involved themselves up goes the flag and it stays up until
a whistle by the referee stops play,
or the the referee waves off the flag
or the opposing team gains clear and controled possession of the ball after the flag was unseen by the referee

Whenever there is doubt if the offside player is involved the flag should not be waved on speculation, the AR must be sure. Better a late correct flag than an early wrong one.

While in many cases we are to wait for a physical touch of the ball before offside is realized.

Not so in interfering with an opponent as proximity and position as well as action all factor in.

In interferring with play if there remains any doubt that the ball might be played by onside players or if the ball might go out of play first we wait for a physical touch by the offside positioned player UNLESS interferring with an opponent was to occur in the mean time!

To see and understand what you see an AR must capture the freeze frame picture of all players at the crucial last touch moment and REMEMBER them as play goes forward so infringment he knows who are the players restricted if eventially there is an offside !
Cheers

Answer provided by Referee Ben Mueller

Flag is raised as soon as the offside positioned player becomes involved in play. In other words, the flag is raised when the AR believes that the player should be penalized.