If I had been handed a £10 note every time someone asked me if Reading should have had a penalty against Liverpool, I could have escaped the wintry Easter and flown to the South of France. Mind you, not every one asked me, many told me that hand ball should have been given against Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard in the dying minutes of the game at Anfield. Even newspaper reporters, who should know better, were suggesting that Reading were robbed by a piece of incompetent refereeing.
The plain truth is that is that it was not handball within the meaning of the law and no referee worth his salt would have given a penalty.
There’s been a lot of supposition of what would have happened if it had happened at the other
end - in other words, the same incident but the ball hitting a Reading player’s hand in their penalty area. Believe me, the result would have been the same.
A lot of people also threw in an incident in earlier match, where a referee penalised another player after the ball hit his hand in the penalty area. It doesn’t matter if a mistake was made in another match, on another day by another referee. This wasn’t hand ball.
Ask any referee and they will tell you that the one thing we get the most appeals about in every match is handball. Players shout for handball not only if it hits an opponents hand but almost anywhere. The point which players and spectators seem to ignore, if they were ever aware of, is that hand ball has to be deliberate. It is in fact the only one of the ten direct free offences that does have to be intentional.
A player can be tripped accidentally, for instance, but it is still a foul, but if the handball is accidental then it is not a foul, even if it stops the ball going in the net.
The law says ‘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). To help them, referees are given certain pieces of advice. All these are contained in the additional instructions to referees on the Laws of the Game.
First of all they are told that ‘handling the ball involves a deliberate act of a player making contact with the ball with his hand or arm’. So although the arm is not mentioned in the Laws it still counts as handling.
They are also told they must take into consideration the movement of the hand towards the ball and not the other way around, which means ignore the ball hitting the hand. Also, and this is critical in the incident at Liverpool, they must consider the distance between the ball and the player.
When Kitson kicked the ball towards the Liverpool goal, Gerrard was less than a yard away. As Steve Coppell said after the game, ‘I’m not sure how much Gerrard knew about it’ and that really is the key. Gerrard had no time in which to make up his mind to deliberately handle the ball. He merely flinched from the kick, turning away and as he did so, the ball hit his hand.
The other thing that referees are advised is that the position of the hand does not necessarily mean there is an infringement. Players sometimes spread their hands to make as large an obstacle as possible but this was not the case here. So, although Gerrard’s hand which struck the ball, was stuck out to one side of his body, this was not a deliberate act to block the ball, it was merely part of his turning away from the kick. Sorry folks, in those circumstances no referee is going to award a free kick for handball.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008