It was I suppose inevitable that I would get some questions from Royals' supporters, about the sending off of central defender Mat Mills in the closely fought match with Doncaster.
The most common question was ‘How does a player get sent off for handball?’ or the variation, ‘Is handball a sending off offence?’ Before I tackle that, may I just say that many people still do not seem to understand that to be an offence at all, handball has to be deliberate.
I heard the world’s worse football pundit, Alan Shearer, pontificating about an incident in a Premier league game recently. A defender was
standing on his own goal line when the ball hit his hand, preventing it from going over the line for a goal. It was one of those goal-mouth skirmishes when the ball was bobbing about in the area. The defender concerned didn’t move his hand or arm towards the ball, nor did he have his arm outstretched making a wider barrier for the ball to cross.
‘I know,’ Shearer said, ‘that handball has to be intentional but if it stops the ball crossing the goal line, even accidentally, it has to be a penalty.’ No it doesn’t.’ The ball accidentally hit his arm and, as the laws quite clearly state, this means no foul, no penalty.
So the first question with the Mills handball is
was it intentional or accidental? Mills protested to the referee claiming it had hit his chest. Believe me, as every referee will tell you, players always do. In Mills’ case there is a little justification in his claim, for the ball first hit his chest but it then bounced down and was likely to go behind him. He moved his arm to prevent it from doing so. I remember when in his short spell with Reading, Greg Hartford gave away a penalty in very similar circumstances. Steve Coppell, then of course Reading manager, when asked whether he thought Hartford’s handball was deliberate said that in his opinion it was involuntary.
What he meant was that it was an automatic reaction when the ball started to get away from him. From the
referee's point of view it was a deliberate movement of the arm towards the ball. We already have enough to decide between accidental and intentional without bringing another equation into it.
So let’s agree that Mills handball was intentional under the
Laws of the Game. We come then to the question, ‘is handball a sending-off offence?’ The answer is no. Intentional handball is simply one of the ten penal offences for which a direct free kick, or in this case a penalty, is awarded. However, under
Sending-off Offences the Law says, ‘a player is sent off if
'he denies the opposing team a goal or obvious goal-scoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball' (this does not apply to a goalkeeper within own penalty
area). That’s what turns handball into a sending-off offence.
So the real question is, did Mills’ handball prevent a goal or a goal-scoring opportunity? Having only watched it on BBC I Player, it is difficult to see how close he was to the goal line or if the ball would have rebounded to the feet of an opposing player. The referee quite clearly thought it was one or the other.
Finally, can I dispel a myth that seems to have grown up around this part of the law. As we have seen, the goalkeeper is obviously exempt from this law inside his own penalty area but what if he handles outside? Many people believe it warrants an automatic sending-off but this is not the case. He is like any other player and would only be shown the red card if his action denies a goal or goal- scoring opportunity.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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