Laws of Association Football

My Role...

Think you know your offside law? or when a goal is not a goal? or when a foul has been committed?

The interpretation of the offside law seems to change every season - a player must be "interfering with play" to be offside. i.e. either playing or touching the ball passed or touched by a team mate.

Suppose Pedro Mendes "goal that never was" for Spurs against Man Utd last season had been the vital goal in a cup match, or promotion/relegation battle? Should we have goal-line technology?

Fouls are often disputed with claims that the player "played the ball", but the simple fact is that if a tackling player makes any contact with the opponent BEFORE making contact with the ball, it is an offence punishable by a free kick or penalty.

Trying to keep track of new laws or new interpretation of laws and the possibility of introducing new technology into football, all comes under the Law and Technology Portfolio.

I'm still not sure how, in the space of one FSF National Council meeting, I went from reserve Southern Division delegate to portfolio holder, must have taken my eye off the ball for a second!

Fsf had had a letter from the League's Andy Williamson, asking for supporter's views on the idea of introducing goal-line technology (glt) and sin bins (sb). The response from the FA's referees committee had been unhelpfull.

A questionnaire was published in tfs and handed out at FP 2005. The results were published in tfs 003 and showed the majority were in favour of GLT, with an automatic system being prefered to use of a video.Fans were also in favour of SB.

I also organised a workshop on the Laws of Assiociation Football at FP 2005, with guest speaker Colin Harris of the Gloucester Referees Association.

In February 2005 IFAB received a presentation on a micro chipped ball. This was followed by an experiment using the ball at a youth tournament in Peru. Discussion on GLT was scheduled to be discussed at an IFAB meeting in February 2006.

I wrote to Andy Williamson to inform him of our survey results and asking for the results of the experiment in Peru and any other information that might be available. As yet I have had no reply.

In the time I have held this portfolio I have learnt a lot about the laws of the game, which sometimes helps and sometimes hinders my extremely biased watching of Pompey, but then of course, referees don't always know that no player in the blue shirt of Pompey can ever be offside!