Recent content by Russell Jones

Given the type of creek we will likely be inhabiting, I’d suggest investing in a large number of good quality paddles …..

We know the bar for a second yellow is (slightly) higher for all of us. That’s even more true in big business entertainment like the World Cup. The argument on this occasion would be that he got lucky, because, whilst he certainly fulfilled the first part of the criteria, there were in fact no...

Two thoughts on this (from hard earned, bitter, experience!). Think of them as competitive matches not friendlies … generally they are not remotely played in a ‘friendly’ spirit. Being far more lenient on tactical fouls is, IMO, fine. However I’d make clear pre game that my threshold for...

That would just be desiccating the game of football ….

I disagree. They certainly gave the impression of doing very little, because their primary rationale was simply to give comms input on penalty area decisions. Now that punters are way more used to the idea of comms, I think the idea might be better received. Regrettably though, as others have...

Thus far in the tournament, all the various ‘time saving’ law changes seem to have been implemented sensibly and achieved the desired outcome. I very much hope this continues to be the case. However, the real stress test will be the upcoming 31 ‘winner takes all’ matches, where the incentive...

In the context of this match and this substitution, I completely back the lack of action from the officials. But worth bearing in mind that, unlike the amendments to the throw in and corner kick restarts, the substitution change does not explicitly give officials much leeway in choosing when /...

The law puts the onus on the outgoing player to leave by the nearest point unless the referee says otherwise, not the other way round

77th minute substitution of the uninjured Mexico GK. Outgoing keeper takes 20 seconds to leave the FOP. Therefore, in law, incoming sub should stay off for 1 minute. But teams are not allowed to play without a goalkeeper …… hmmm 🤔 🤔 Obviously we wouldn’t expect the officials to get “busy” in...

Unless, as on our one this year, the medical team rock up 75 mins late and then there’s a further delay because of, you guessed it, a medical emergency!

Absolutely. It was a common theme in our 7-6-5 coaching visits last season that refs were being caught out of position at GK punts because of starting the count in a position that was too deep. Think next season it will be incumbent on refs to get to their desired restart positions promptly...

There are five in stadium officials at each game, the ‘extra’ one being the Reserve AR, which makes complete sense given how long it’s probably been since any of the 4th officials actually ran the line! Many of the officials fulfilling these roles are only at the tournament as backups and are...

Generally speaking, I believe that UEFA do not aim to implement the spirit or the letter of the current law as it is written. Instead, they often penalise entirely natural positions of the arm simply because an advantage has been gained. Conversely, over the past two seasons, PGMO have moved to...

Overall, the real pity is that it wasn’t given as a YC on field. There would then have been few complaints with that and very little argument that the YC should be VAR reviewed as a clear and obvious error.

What I really like about the current framing of the handball law (and yes, I know I’m in a minority!) is that you can basically distil it down to one simple and eminently fair question. Has the potential offender actually done anything wrong? If not, we play on, even if the accidental handball...