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You're not sure that smashing someone in the face falls under violent conduct? Please explain.

Not when it's an attacking free kick on the goal area line you shouldn't. That would mean making some of the defenders stand four yards behind the goal line.

OK, so that's obviously a good policy when talking about AYSO games but it does not say that in USSF games overall the referee is responsible for spectator behaviour - or even in youth games really, except insofar as the referee can ask for an abusive parent to be dealt with by others.

It's not DOGSO, since the goal was in fact scored. Also, it does matter if the referee judges it not to be on purpose, because then you have to decide if the player has made their body unnaturally bigger or not. If it wasn't deliberate and the player hasn't made their body unnaturally bigger...

Do you have the quote from the USSF rulebook? I'd be interested to see exactly what it says.

He did - you can see he starts moving the whistle up to his mouth before the ball is kicked. He may even have whistled before the kick, though I'm not entirely sure about that.

Couple of things. Firstly, as @JamesL says, the law talks about the hand/arm making the body unnaturally bigger rather than it being in an unnatural position, and secondly there is no reference any more to any specific hand/arm positions in the law. All it says is that:

Agree with everything except your last paragraph. For me, a fully justified red card not being given should never be excused on the basis that it might ruin the game.

The article in the Echo doesn't say when in 2002 he refereed an Everton game but I'd be fairly surprised if it was after declaring his interest in them. It also doesn't say he was never an official for an Everton game after that point, only that he didn't referee a game involving them. As I...

I'm pretty sure the rule was already in place when Chris Foy was refereeing. According to this article in the Liverpool Echo, he only refereed games involving Everton before becoming a supporter. Everton FC fan Chris Foy to referee FA Community Shield

Then I think you may possibly be under a mistaken impression. As far as I'm aware, the only team(s) a PGMOL official may not officiate for are the team(s) they declare an affiliation to (usually only the team they support). Many people are born in a town or city but then their families move...

You need to be careful with the law definitions here or you risk getting confused and making a decision based on a mistaken interpretation of the offside law. The player can't be "interfering with play at this stage" because he hasn't touched the ball.

Can't tell from that image whether it's an earring or not.

Yes, sorry, that's correct. But my main point was and is, that we can't assume that only a short and cursory check was done, when play is continuing after any given incident.

Well, not necessarily. If it's not over and they still want to continue checking, that's when they world ask the referee to hold the restart until the check is complete. The thing is, play could easily continue for several minutes with a background check still going on and we would be none the...

The check goes on in the background, and unless we're privy to the VAR discussions (which we're not) we don't know how long it lasted. Could have been 30 seconds, could have been five minutes.

And here's a video of that incident.

Clearly the the player in an offside position (PIOP) did not interfere with play but it's not entirely clear to me whether they might have interfered with an opponent. It sounds like they probably didn't, but there's just not enough detail in your description to be completely sure. For...

Correct - and for those interested in the history of this, it actually came about in two stages. First of all, in 1996 it changed from no going back whatsoever, to the referee being allowed to go back and penalise the original offence if the advantage did not develop, "at that time." However...