Offside research is not on the ball

I don't normally watch breakfast television but just before Christmas, I was making my way through the living room and I stopped to look when I heard mention of 'offside'.

Sitting alongside the resident presenters was Adrian Chiles from Match of the Day 2. 'Do you know the offside law', he was asked by the female presenter and when he said he did, she challenged him to explain it, in a way that suggested perhaps she felt he didn't. Her suspicions were well founded.

 'A player is offside,' he said, 'unless he has two opponents between him and their goal line'. That hasn't been the offside law since 1990. I know some people think I gripe too much about television football pundits but here is someone who feels fit to comment on referees, yet his own knowledge of the laws is fifteen years out of date.

The actual discussion, which I missed, was about the findings of a study by Dr Francisco Belda Maruenda, published in the British Medical Journal. Let me say, this is nothing new. A Spanish University published similar comments some years ago. Also, assistant referees have always known that there are times when they can't be certain that they are correct in their decision. However, from the headlines you would think that every offside decision is wrong. 

One newspaper had the headline 'Proof referees are blind. Doctors show the eye can't detect offside'. I haven't seen the report but the good doctor apparently agrees that the key factor in applying the offside law, is that the player must be in an offside position at the exact time when the ball is passed from a team mate. 

That is certainly correct but what Dr Maruenda contends, is that to apply the rule correctly, the assistant referee must be able to keep at least five moving objects in his visual field at the same time. These are two players of the attacking side, two of the defending team and the ball. He concludes that this is beyond the capability of the human eye. 

If his hypothesis wasn't seriously flawed, I would concede he has a point. To start with, the assistant referee doesn't have to keep two defenders in view. He is concerned only with the last-but-one defender. The last defender is usually the goalkeeper and doesn't come into the equation. Therefore the assistant referee only has to keep under observation one defender, the attacker who is likely to be alongside him and the kicker who has the ball, so its only really two areas to watch. 

As the assistant referee stands at the extremity of the pitch, on most occasions this is quite within the capability of the human eye. There are, however, occasions when it cannot cope.

Imagine play along his touchline, the assistant referee is keeping his eye on the ball in case it goes out of play but the player crosses it. Often in our training we place two people together shoulder to shoulder but facing opposite directions. On the word go, they both take a step forward. In that split second they are two yards apart. That is what can happen in the split second, it takes the assistant referee to turn his head. This led Philip Don, when he was referee's supremo of the Premiership, to suggest that assistant referees didn't flag unless they saw daylight between the attacker and the defender. The press and television commentators heard this and thought it was a change in the law. It wasn't and he was forced to withdraw it. 

One thing television replays show, is that assistant referees almost always get it right, so Dr Maruenda's lengthy research doesn't seem to be borne out. Makes you wonder if perhaps, like Adrian Chiles, he is still working on the pre-1990 version of the offside law. 

Dick Sawdon Smith

 

 

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© R Sawdon Smith 2005