Question Number: 26433

Law 7 - Match Duration 6/9/2012

RE: Competitive Under 17

Mike of Sydney, Nsw Australia asks...

A player was injured with a dislocated knee after 25 mins. Score was 1-0.
Ambulance was called as player could not be moved without risk of further injury.
Referee kept players on the field for the remaining 10 mins then called half time.
10 mins later, ambulance had still not arrived and player was still on the field.
Referee blew the whistle to commence the second half but no kick off taken.
Ambulance arrived and treated the player before removing on a stretcher.
Game commenced with a kickoff with 1 minute remaining of the game.
Game ended as 1-0.
Should the score stand or the game have been terminated?

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Mike
I'm not familiar with any nuances that may exist in your local area or competition rules. In this part of the world the match would restart from the point that the injury occurred and the remaining 65 minutes would be played with a half time interval as normal. If the remaining 65 minutes cannot be finished due to poor light, pitch schedule etc the game is abandoned and the matter reported.
While it is at the referee's discretion, allowance is made in either period for all time lost through injury and removal of injured players from the field of play for treatment as per Law 7. In addition the 2nd half did not commence as the ball was not put into play by a kick off as per Law 8.
So if I read this correctly only 25 minutes in total was played out of 90 minutes with the referee allowing his match clock to continue throughout the injury situation. After 25 minutes of play the referee blew for half time I assume after no play for the remaining 20 minutes of the half. There was a half time break of ten minutes followed by 44 minutes of again no play in the second half making 77 minutes in total of no play?
In this part of the world the game would have been abandoned at the start of the second half as there had been no play for 35 minutes and no prospect of play either. The matter would then be reported to the competition organisers as an abandoned game.
I would believe though that in equity even with a competition rule in existence that 25 minutes would not constitute a true game with a result recorded.

Answer provided by Referee Jason Wright

Interesting question Mike. Generally speaking, if there's an injury then the clock should be stopped for as long as it takes - though naturally there are real world considerations, such as match schedules and available light.

If this has occurred at all, then I suspect that matches in your league aren't played with stoppage time at all - a common occurrent in Australia, I've found, particularly when there's only a few minutes between each scheduled kickoff time.

In this case, the referee may well be following a directive from the local RA here. I know I've received similar directives in my time, whereas some areas will suggest that if the player doesn't look like moving after, say, 20min, then the match should be terminated.

The referee has not made any errors in the laws of the game here, so it really comes down to how the decision fits in with the local league policies.

Of course, it might be easy to say in hidsight that the match should have been abandoned at a certain point, but Murphy's law would suggest that if the referee did that, then the Ambulance would turn up and have the player taken away 10 minutes later!

As for whether the score should stand - this is definitely an issue for the local competition to decide upon, and they'll probably have regulations in place to guide their decision. Some referees will do whatever they can to get as much of the match in as possible to try and get a result that stands, knowing that it can be very difficult to fit in rescheduled matches.

This is why it's important to know the competition rules. If, say, the rule states that 70% of the match needs to be played , then early in the 2nd half it would become evident that more than 30% of time had been lost, so the referee would abandon.

The referee should always submit an incident report in extraordinary circumstances like this.