Change rules?

Whilst I was playing in a coed league game last week, a player from the other team took a shot which the keeper parried. It came back to another player, and the AR’s flag immediately went up. The opposing player closest to me turned to the ref and told him: “You can’t be offside from a shot”.



You do ask yourself sometimes where people get their idea of the rules from. I found myself wondering later how anyone who has watched or played soccer in the last few years could have got the notion that no one is offside on a shot. But then there isn’t actually any formal channel for informing players of rule changes. Anyone who reads and watches enough professional soccer will know when FIFA officially modify or introduce any rules. But what about the casual player? Who will tell them that something that was ok last season is now illegal?

There are rarely any major rule changes anymore – the last I can think of was banning a goalkeeper picking up a backpass, and that was changed almost 20 years ago. But important modifications do get made. There was a time when for an indirect free kick the ball had to travel one full revolution before a second player could kick it; no more. Rules governing how close to the line a throw-in can be taken, and how far away an opposing player can stand have changed in the last decade. And as for the recent reinterpretations over what constitutes active and passive offsides, even the FIFA refs seem to still struggle with that. Uncertainty over what the current rule is can lead to all kinds of confusion.



Worse than the players not knowing rules is finding referees that seem equally uninformed. We play a summer 6v6 league in Charleston that uses a “three line” rule similar to hockey – yet last week it was obvious that the ref had no idea about this rule and had to be told at half time.

Then you get refs who regard the laws of the game as subject to the level being played. In a game I watched last week a penalty was given after a player had pushed the ball a good 15 yards in front of him and completely lost control of it, before colliding with the defender. The point was made to the ref that in a professional game that would never have been a pk; the ref’s response was that this wasn’t a professional game. True, but the rules of the game are no different at either level. If you start allowing a sliding scale of what is allowed relative to the particular league being played, there will simply be another layer on top of an already frustrating spectrum of inconsistency. For example, what constitutes a yellow and red card also differs wildly between a Premiership game and a local coed league. Is that right or wrong?



By the time you factor in the lack of communication to amateur players over rules, the various minor differences between various leagues (can you slide tackle or not?), and refs who differ from week to week on their interpretation of the laws, it’s not surprising that such frustration results. Sometimes the nice thing about pickup is just not having to worry over when the next whistle is coming.