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Wolves - Liverpool

Tealeaf

Tealeaf

Lighting the darkest hour
Staff member
Well that’s an unusual start. Lights out, VAR offline and a drop ball to the goalkeeper. Question is did the power cut trip out the GLT?

Traore probably had crossed the ball into the penalty area so a safe restart, despite the protests.
 
The Referee Store
Can't really blame the referee for anything there, very difficult to know where the ball was when he stopped play given the stadium was in pitch darkness.

Would have been interesting if there had been a contentious decision whilst VAR was out of action.
 
RustyRef said:
Can't really blame the referee for anything there, very difficult to know where the ball was when he stopped play given the stadium was in pitch darkness.

Would have been interesting if there had been a contentious decision whilst VAR was out of action.
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I would hope the FA have something in place for every eventuality after COVID!
 
When the lights went out Troare hadn't yet crossed it, give Marriner the benefit of the doubt he didn't know that as it's such an unusual occurrence.

Although EPL refs nearly always interfere with / manage drop ball restarts in the final third; when they do drop it to the attacking side they insist it gets passed backwards.
 
RustyRef said:
Can't really blame the referee for anything there, very difficult to know where the ball was when he stopped play given the stadium was in pitch darkness.

Would have been interesting if there had been a contentious decision whilst VAR was out of action.
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bester said:
When the lights went out Troare hadn't yet crossed it, give Marriner the benefit of the doubt he didn't know that as it's such an unusual occurrence.

Although EPL refs nearly always interfere with / manage drop ball restarts in the final third; when they do drop it to the attacking side they insist it gets passed backwards.
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Love the commentator trying to help but being totally wrong as per.

Said something like 'this eventuality is never going to be covered in a referee's exam' - every exam I can remember, going back to 1998, included some kind of 'outside agent' problem resulting in a drop ball - it's just the nature of the drop that has changed...
 
bester said:
Although EPL refs nearly always interfere with / manage drop ball restarts in the final third; when they do drop it to the attacking side they insist it gets passed backwards.
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I've seen one or two instances where it looked as if that could have been what happened but it wasn't totally clear to me whether it was something the player decided to do by themselves or something the referee had advised them to do.

One thing I would say is that I'm not aware of anything in the law that would give referees the right to tell a team what to do with a dropped ball, any more than they have the right to tell them what to do with a free kick.
 
I think the fact that refs did tell teams what to do on the “old days” is a big part of what led to the DB to the team in possession rule We have today.

Nothing in the LOTG gives (or ever gave) the R any authority to tell players what to do on a DB. But the R does decide where to stand while dropping the ball, which can have the effect of forcing a back play.
 
socal lurker said:
Nothing in the LOTG gives (or ever gave) the R any authority to tell players what to do on a DB. But the R does decide where to stand while dropping the ball, which can have the effect of forcing a back play.
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Agree, but with the old law there was nothing wrong with suggesting that one team kicked it back to the other. "They had possession lads when I stopped it, fancy kicking it back to them?". In my experience 99% of the time there were more than happy to.

And that was of course done to avoid the potential car crash of a contested dropped ball, with the new law it no longer needs to be a tool in a referee's armoury.
 
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