Handball is one of the simplest of the laws of football. A one
liner which says, 'A direct free kick is awarded to the opposing team, if a player handles the ball deliberately (except for the goalkeeper within his own penalty area)'. It can't get much less complicated than that. And yet I got home the other Saturday to hear two of the BBC's afternoon pundits arguing about a penalty given for
handball at one of the matches they had been watching.
It is of course that word 'deliberately' that causes most of the arguments. On local parks we get more shouts for handball than anything else but in the majority of cases the ball hits the hand of an opponent. That is the operative phrase, 'ball hits the hand'. The quick way of deciding whether a handball should be penalised, bearing in mind that it has to be a deliberate act, has traditionally been to ask, 'was it ball to hand or hand to
ball'?
What the two Saturday pundits were arguing about was something different. Garth Crooks was of the opinion that the player concerned had only raised his hands to prevent the ball hitting him in the face. Reminds me of when I was a schoolboy footballer and players who handled the ball invariably claimed 'self-defence', to which the reply was 'self-defence is no defence'. The truth is of course that it all depends on the circumstances.
Take for instance players forming a wall at a free kick, many will use their hands to protect their most precious parts. If the ball is kicked low and hits their hands, that's not taken as intentional handball. At other times it will depend on how close the player is to the kicker. If he instinctively raises his hands to protect himself from a kick at close range and doesn't have time to do anything else, it would not normally be considered to be intentional handball. This is the point that Garth Crooks was trying to make.
Garry Pallister, the other pundit ,disputed the self-defence angle,
however. In his opinion, the player had stretched out his arms to make as wide a barrier to the ball as possible. The BBC could not show the incident in the afternoon, so I had to wait until
Match of the Day to see which of them I agreed with. When the incident was shown, it was quite clear that Pallister was the more perceptive. The player, when he lunged forward in the tackle had clearly stretched out his arms well above his face, creating a barrier that blocked the ball's progress.
This is something that seems to be happening increasingly, players reaching out with their arms and hands when an opponent is about to cross a ball into the penalty area. This is where that simple little saying, 'ball to hand or hand to ball' becomes obsolete. The player has not moved his hand towards the ball, in fact he is not certain where the ball is likely to go off the opponent's foot. However, the hands and arms are raised for one purpose, to stop the ball should it come in that direction.
Imagine if all the players in the wall at a free kick, jumped and at the same time raised their hands above their heads. If the ball hit one of the outstretched hands, then there would be no argument that it should be penalised as handball. There is no difference when an individual player makes a similar action, it should still regarded as intentionally handling the ball.
Now I haven't even mentioned when a player deliberately handling the ball should be cautioned or in some cases sent off but it can be seen that when it comes to application, that one line simple law, starts to get a little more complicated.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2006