No "Offside" forum, so putting this here.
A good day in London, but an awarding of a PK piqued my curiosity about how the law is applied.
[LAWS]Law 11.4: Sanction: When a player is penalised for being offside in general play, the opposing team chooses either a penalty kick at the place of infringement or a scrum at the place where the offending team last played the ball. If it was last played in that team’s in-goal, the scrum is formed 5 metres from the goal line in line with where it was played.
[/LAWS]
The above implies that if a player is in front of the kicker and is subsequently penalized, the referee gives one of two options:
Think about #2. To further downfield (towards the non-offending goal-line) that player is, the further back the PK is for the non-offending team. So if a player ahead on a kick-chase is 10m in front of the offside line across the field as the ball is kicked (in line with the kicker) then the PK is further back for the non-offending team than if the offending player was 1m in front of the offside line when the ball was kicked.
In my case, he was a few metres offside, then never stopped after being yelled at, so I awarded the options (they took the PK at the place where he was offside when the ball was kicked).
How are others applying the law here? It seems to be that the further you are from the offside line, the less of a benefit it is to the non-offending team. Something doesn’t jive here in terms of equity, but it may either be poorly worded or simply poorly applied by yours truly!
A good day in London, but an awarding of a PK piqued my curiosity about how the law is applied.
[LAWS]Law 11.4: Sanction: When a player is penalised for being offside in general play, the opposing team chooses either a penalty kick at the place of infringement or a scrum at the place where the offending team last played the ball. If it was last played in that team’s in-goal, the scrum is formed 5 metres from the goal line in line with where it was played.
[/LAWS]
The above implies that if a player is in front of the kicker and is subsequently penalized, the referee gives one of two options:
- A scrum where the kicker kicked the ball (i.e. where the ball was last played)
- A PK where the player is offside
Think about #2. To further downfield (towards the non-offending goal-line) that player is, the further back the PK is for the non-offending team. So if a player ahead on a kick-chase is 10m in front of the offside line across the field as the ball is kicked (in line with the kicker) then the PK is further back for the non-offending team than if the offending player was 1m in front of the offside line when the ball was kicked.
In my case, he was a few metres offside, then never stopped after being yelled at, so I awarded the options (they took the PK at the place where he was offside when the ball was kicked).
How are others applying the law here? It seems to be that the further you are from the offside line, the less of a benefit it is to the non-offending team. Something doesn’t jive here in terms of equity, but it may either be poorly worded or simply poorly applied by yours truly!
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