Yes, still a back pass
Yes, it would be for me. Else it could be a trick to circumvent the law.
Poor wording but I would see this, to be consistent with other parts of law, as towards the halfway line.
Would this also be applied in the event a player lays on the floor to header the ball back to the keeper or does a keepy up to header the ball back to the keeper?
I agree with your first and third point, but disagree with the second. If the keeper has received the ball fro an opponent, the GK is absolutely free to bring the ball back into the PA. That isn’t circumvention, as it didn’t come from a teammate.
Law seems clear that it has to have been kicked. There's no trick in your example, just an unorthodox header.
For the first part, yes, I think most experienced referees would agree with @JamesL that was trickery to circumvent the “back pass” law no less than flicking it up from the ground with the foot to head it. The whole point is that silliness cannot be used to get around the restriction.
You are mistaken. This would count as a "backpass"
But how can that be when the ball has touched another player and has not been kicked to the goalkeeper?
Definition of kick in LOTG from memory is making contact with the ball using the foot or ankle... So by kicking the ball, LOTG definition, for the keeper to pick up, equals kicking the ball to the goalkeeper.
Definition of kick is correct, but I think potentially hard to argue that it's been 'deliberately kicked to the goalkeeper'. The team mate could even bring the ball slightly further away from where the goalkeeper is to make it even more difficult.
You have to make a determination as to the deliberateness of what happens. I agree that simply trapping the ball with no deliberate intent to kick to keeper then it's not an offence but the way I read the sequence suggested above it was a deliberate kick to the keeper to pick up, based on what I wrote above. As with all these things you have to be there and it's your opinion as the referee that matters.
Well like @socal lurker I agree with 2 out of three. But the first two.
This is where the term “back pass” does us no favours. The direction of the pass does not matter - what matters is whether it’s an intentional pass to the goalkeeper. The ball can be played in any direction and it’s still an offence if you decide it was done deliberately. If you don’t think it was deliberate then there’s no offence.
Not so. The ball has to be deliberately kicked to the GK by a team mate.
Hi
Sorry, but that just isn't true.
I get all that mate.
Agreed. The question though is what is a deliberate kick and direction. Direction of the kick is not in the law so it can be in any direction as mentioned by Rusty Ref who was 100% correct and the ball is kicked when a player makes contact with it with the foot and/or the ankle. Foot control of the ball meets that requirement.
That issue only really presents itself in a match where you have to explain the law to players appealing when an opponent has say, "kneed" the ball to their GK. The ball has to be kicked (deliberately) to the GK using the foot or ankle, as you correctly state. Controlling the ball with the foot can meet that requirement but the process of returning it to the GK still has to be deliberate. For me, a GK can roll the ball out to a team mate who then controls it, realises there's danger, gets a shout from his GK to "Leave" who can then pounce on the ball and no offence has taken place since the ball wasn't deliberately kicked to him. In Rusty's scenario (above) the shout comes from the player rather than the GK and so the act can be deemed deliberate, therefore an offence.
