doh - continued

For those like me old enough to remember, the rule used to be that handball needed to be intentional to be an offence. Hand to ball and all - ie, you made a deliberate motion to handle the ball.

So if the ball was blasted at you from only a yard or two away and your arm happened to be sticking out from your body, it wasnt a pen.

It required a bit of judgement and interpretation from the officials. They no doubt got it wrong sometimes. But it wasn't mad, and if applied sensible generally didn't send normal football fans into regular rages, or give penalties when clearly nothing of the sort should be given.

But there was one problem that meant it had to be changed. That was that if you were an defender in front of your own goal, you could just stand there or jump with your arms outstretched, and if the ball hit them it wasnt a pen. BUt youve saved a goal and it should be.

So we ended up with the current mess of unnatural positions, ridiculous penalties etc.

So the right answer is - go back it being an offence if you deliberately handle the ball (as the old rule was) *or* if you deliberately put your arms in an unnatural position to give you a better chance of blocking the ball.

Yes, in both cases it would go back to relying on the ref's judgement (with VAR if need be).
Yes there's be decisions that we'd disagree with.

But the rule would go back to being one that was actually trying to deter what we want to deter - ie deliberately using your arms to block the ball, or increase your chance of blocking the ball. Rather than the madness we have now.

There you have it.

Posted By: Tricky Hawes, May 11, 15:11:25