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Highly debatable. That doesn't make it a handball offence. Utterly irrelevant in law.

It's not a cautionable offence to refuse to leave the field entirely. However if you do leave but in doing so, take too much time about it (including not leaving by the nearest point) then as mentioned above, you should be cautioned for delaying the restart.

I'm not 100% sure (because the camera was zoomed in on him and I couldn't see the field markings) but given how long he seemed to keep walking before he left the field and knowing how wide a football pitch is, I suspect he did not leave the field, "by the nearest point on the boundary line," as...

Violent Conduct - excessive force or brutality or non-negligible face/head contact with hand/arm. The law is not asking us to decide whether it's closer to brutality or negligible, it's asking us to penalise as VC either when there's brutality or when there's any contact to the head or face...

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...