When we train new referees, we often say, when describing some obscure part of the laws, ‘we have to tell you this but it is unlikely that it will ever happen to you.’ It’s a good job we do, for sometimes the unlikely becomes fact.
I remember watching a new referee in his first game when two players kicked the ball at the same time and the ball burst. Something that will never happen to most referees in their refereeing career. In the very same game, one of the goalkeepers took a goal kick into a very strong wind which blew the ball back into the penalty area and he caught it. Something very few will ever experience but thankfully the new referee remembered that once the ball is in play at a goal kick, the kicker is not entitled to play it again until it is touched by another player.
There was an unusual incident in the Premier League match, Sunderland v Wolves, the weekend before last, that gave rise to a few questions. The interest for Reading supporters is that it led to a goal by former Royals striker Kevin Doyle.
Let me relate briefly what happened. Keiran Richardson, now playing for Sunderland, kicked the ball back to Craig Gordon, his goalkeeper. Nothing unusual about that, but he struck it so hard and wide of the goalkeeper that it seemed that it was going to be an own goal. Gordon; however, dived and pushed the ball away, saving it from going in the goal. Everyone is aware that the goalkeeper may not touch the ball with his hands when kicked directly to him by a team mate and the first question I was asked was, as it was an ‘illegal’ handball, shouldn’t it have been a penalty? However the law is quite clear on this point. ‘An indirect free-kick is awarded to the opposing side if a goalkeeper, inside his own penalty area, touches the ball with his hands after it has been deliberately kicked to him by a team mate.’
The next question might be more taxing. ‘By saving the ball going into the goal with an illegal handball, wasn’t the goal keeper guilty of denying the opponents a goal and therefore, should have been sent off?’ If anyone else had committed this offence they would have received a red card but the goalkeeper is excluded from this sanction. The law says ‘this does not apply to a goalkeeper in his own penalty area.’
So we have an indirect free-kick for an offence committed inside the goal area, known more commonly as the six-yard box. Where is the free kick taken from? Usually where the infringement took place but in this case, it is taken back from where the infringement occurred, to the nearest point on the goal area line which runs parallel to the goal line. This is of course only six yards from goal but the law demands that opponents at free kicks stand at least ten yards (9.15 metres) from the ball. So a referee needs to know that in these circumstances the law also allows opponents to stand on the goal line between the posts.
When a team line up on the goal line only six yards from the ball almost filling up all available space it can be very difficult to score, particularly bearing in mind that it is an indirect free-kick so a goal cannot be scored direct .It has to be played to a team mate before an attempt at goal can be made. In this case, the original attempt bounced off the touchline wall to Kevin Doyle who managed to squeeze through the bodies into the net. But just imagine if you were a new referee and you were faced with that little sequence of events in your first game.