The big question at the Madejski Stadium last weekend is one, I suspect, that has been echoing around pubs, clubs and workplaces in the town all week. It is certainly the one I have been asked several times since.
'Should Paddy Kelly, the Sheffield United goalkeeper, have been sent off for handling the ball outside his area in the top of the table clash last Saturday?' Many compared it with the game against Millwall earlier in the season, when their goalkeeper was dismissed after making a flying save - unfortunately for him, the wrong side of his penalty area.
The trouble is, we have been influenced by radio and television commentators, who believe that any handling by a goalkeeper outside his area, means automatic dismissal. If we look at the seven sending-off offences in Law 12, what we see is, 'A player is sent off if he denies the opposing team a goal or obvious goal scoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball.' It then goes on to qualify that by saying, 'This does not apply to a goalkeeper in his own penalty
area' - which means that it does apply to a goalkeeper, outside his own penalty area.
The key point here is not 'did he handle the ball?' but
'did he deny a goal or an obvious goal scoring opportunity?'
Those fans who were at the Millwall game, will remember that a Reading player took a shot at goal and, if it had not been for the intervention of the goalkeeper diving sideways, the ball would quite
clearly have ended in the back of the net. It was a very obvious case of a goal being denied.
The incident in the Sheffield game was somewhat different. Bobby Convey, Reading's American winger, was bursting through just outside the Sheffield penalty area but the ball bounced away from him, giving a Sheffield defender the chance to head the ball back to his goalkeeper, who had come out of his goal. Unfortunately for him, he had come too far and was outside his penalty area.
The ball was going to go past him and with Convey bearing down, Kelly stuck out his arm and knocked it away. A direct free kick, of that there was no doubt but, unlike the Millwall game, the ball would not have gone straight into the goal if the keeper had not handled it. He did not deny a goal. The question then is, did he deny an obvious goal scoring opportunity. Seventeen thousand Reading fans will answer that he did but the only one whose opinion counts is the referee, Grant Hegley - and in his view he did not. He had to be sure that if the goalkeeper had not handled, Convey would certainly have had the opportunity to score. He can't think he might have, it has to be obvious that the opportunity would have been there. In his television interview after the game Hegley said he didn't consider that would have happened.
Why then, some fans have said to me, did he show the keeper a yellow card? Surely it's a case of a red card or nothing. That isn't true. There are three occasions when a handball deserves a yellow card under the heading of unsporting behaviour. One is when a defender tried to prevent a goal by handball but does not succeed and the ball still goes in the goal. Another is when an attacker attempts to score a goal with his hand. The third is when a player breaks up an attack by illegally handling the ball. In this case, that is what the referee considered the Sheffield United goalkeeper guilty of, even though most Reading fans will believe that Paddy Kelly had the luck of the Irish to stay on the field.
Dick
Sawdon Smith