My first task every day, after completing my early morning fitness routine, is to walk down to the local shop to pick up a newspaper so I can read it over breakfast.
On Monday 2nd April I hadn’t even reached the shop when I was asked the question. THE question. I’ve lost count of how many times I have been asked it since; I’ve even had it in e-mails. The question of course is ‘was it a penalty?’ In other words, was the handball by Reading debutant Greg Halford an offence under the laws of the game in the match against Tottenham
Hotspur?
I think it probably fair to suggest that most of those asking the question, like me, were not at White Hart Lane on Sunday 1st April but watched the highlights on BBC’s Match of the Day 2. As there was no other Premiership games that Sunday, Reading got a little more airing than usual and the incident was covered in some detail.
What I found intriguing were the various comments made, including those of Steve Coppell in his post-match interview. That refugee from Working Lunch, Adrian Chiles, who hosts the programme, picked up on the observation by one of the pundits, that to be penalised a handball has to be intentional. ‘How do you judge intent,’ he blustered, ‘surely that means that referees have to be mind readers?’
That’s one way of looking at it. What the law actually says is ‘A direct free kick is awarded to the opposing team, if a player deliberately handles the ball. (except for a goalkeeper in his own penalty area).’
I suppose to most of us, 'intentional' and
'deliberate' mean the same thing, in which case referees do have to make decision by judging the intention of the player. This is one of the few instances now when a referee has to take intention into account for free kicks.
Before they re-wrote the laws, all direct free kick offences were only penalised if the referee thought they were intentional. Take a trip for example. A player may have been tripped, perhaps by a late tackle but the referee could say ‘I didn’t think it was intentional, I thought the player was going for the ball,’ and not give a free kick. All this has been removed and if a player is tripped, the referee no longer has to consider intent; it’s a free kick.
But back to the handball. Steve Coppell’s description of the handball was interesting. While not denying that Halford had handled the ball, he called it an ‘involuntary’ act. I think that if you watch the replay of the incident, which we were able to do on
Match of the Day, then you might feel it is a good description. The ball first of all hit Halford on the arm but it bounced down and he then clearly moved his arm to cradle it with his hand, a reaction that may have been involuntary. This also explains the reported reaction of referee Alan Wiley, who first seemed to wave away the call for handball and then changed his mind and gave the penalty.
A similar thing happened a few weeks ago to Robbie Keen, the Spurs Captain who converted the penalty to score the solitary goal in Reading’s match. The ball hit him on the chest and bounced down and he then knocked the ball away with his hand. He protested long and hard but the camera clearly showed the movement of his hand, however involuntary it may have been.
So was it a penalty? Every referee I have spoken to would have made the same decision as Alan Wiley and I agree with them. It’s hard enough that we are expected to judge whether an action is deliberate or unintentional, without having to differentiate between intentional and involuntary.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2007