It depends whether you judge the player's arm position to be "a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation" - or not.
it’s because I’ve been told any deflection from the defenders body, regardless of where arms are is not a handball and I want to be 100% certain of this before I stand my ground one game.
It’s a couple of seasons since the bit about "deflection off the body" was removed (and it was not written clearly anyway) so use the current (simpler) wording from Law 12, as Peter has quited above.
Probably should have called it deflected handball
I had a situation where ball hit a defenders knee. Hit their arm. Arm was raised parallel with shoulders and extended above head. I gave a penalty, as I didn’t think arm needed to be there or could justify it being there. Was told because of deflection it shouldn’t have been given.
Yes corner.. i think ball came in attacker had a shot, ball hit defenders knee and bounced up and hit arm. Arm raised at right angle above shoulders/head.
Based on your description I say you made the right decision. Or at least you weren't clearly an obviously wrong.
Were you told by someone who you would normally trust to know the laws of the game, or by someone who thinks they know stuff?!
Well some one on Twitter that runs a ref group. So I’d assumed they know what they’re talking about.
i‘m going to go a bit round about here. The natural position concept originally came about as a kind of deliberate. The idea was that when a player deliberately puts an arm in an unnatural place that take space away from a defender, any “accidental” contact really is deliberate—just disguised by the player. In my mind, that colors how we need to look at unnatural position and deflections. If the arm isn’t somewhere that it is taking space from where the ball is headed or likely to head, itks a pretty good clue the position is natural, as there is no other reason for it to be there.
Not quite right from the past…A brave assumption
Their knowledge is not quite up to date. . .
Don't believe everything you read on a referee group on the internet
As others have already mentioned, the clause about a deflection off the player's own body onto their arm not being a handball offence is not part of the laws any more. So it's no longer the kind of unequivocal decision that some have apparently been telling you it is.
