EDIT: This may help. The offence here is not a deliberate handling of the ball. The offence is touching the ball with hands after being deliberately kicked to him by a team mate. These are two different offences (both involve touching the ball with hand). One is punishable by DFK, the other by IFK.
They're not though. They're both handball offences, it's just that a Goalkeeper is immune to being punished for it by a direct freekick offence in the box. That is all that the law is saying; There's no seperate offence, there's no separate punishment here, it's to me, black and white.
For me that would be a misinterpretation of the law. That clause is clearly written for a field player which commits a deliberate handball offence. By no means any part of the clause should apply to a gal keepers in their own PA. That is why the "except" caveat is there. It is not there to exempt keeper from other offences which involves handling the ball.
Again, I disagree. The clause is part of the the process of determining a DOSGO via freekick offence, which you were ignoring. If we dismiss the argument that it isn't a handling offence, which is just absurd anyway (look at the very definition for handball), and we say that this is a handling offence, punishable by a 'freekick' - because this is the only loophole available to punish the keeper with a red card, then by all rights you
must examine those clauses. And of course, once we do, we come into the feedback loop; It's a handling offence, resulting in a freekick, that he still cannot be sent off for thanks to the immunity, whichever way you'd like to cut it.
The only way to ever get that 'it's a freekick offence, we can send him off' to work, is to entirely ignore those clauses, which in my view is categorically wrong. Or, just pretend it isn't a handling offence, which again, is absurd.
I don't think your reasoning holds up personally, I don't mean any offence, but it's just bypasses the obstacles in order to get to the preferred solution. I'm in agreement with Ellery's assessment that it's pretty clear in the Laws that it would be a handling offence and there can't be a red card for DOSGO. - I'm no good at putting my point across though!
Edit: Having said all that though, I do agree it needs looking at to shift it in the way the thrown object law has been changed, because although rare, it is an easy out for the keeper if he gets under pressure from a pass-back.
