A&H

Brighton v Manchester United - Handball after final whistle

Now that we know what you do in your scenarios, what would you do in my scenarios? If it makes it any easier let's say it is me who is the referee. What would you recommend me do? (in my scenarios, let's not change it so that i would avoid getting there)

In your scenarios

1) don't blow the whistle for full time until the team has kicked off. By blowing as the ball hits the back of the net you've created a problem for yourself. Assuming you've not done that, then as you've blown the final whistle and there is no penalty you have to award the incorrect goal and suck it up.

2) if you are in a credible position you stick with your decision. If not you should be looking for help from your AR before signalling. If you've clearly briefed your AR prior to the game on your expectations and they've gone against you, you should run over to them and clearly let them know they are going to need to have surgery to remove the flag once your finished with them. Either way it's the end of the game as you've blown the whistle and there is no VAR protocol in play to help you.

Both of these hypothetical situtations would be easily avoided by adopting a safe refereeing approach and briefing your assistants accordingly.

Both situations you've screwed up and if you were being observed I'm sure would be classed as major development points and you'd be marked accordingly based on the level.
 
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The Referee Store
Changed the scenario once again.

Look, I stuffed up and didn'r go with your advise and blew the whistle (or didn't give the right instructions). I am where I am. What should I do now?

I am not sure if you are avoiding answering the questions or don't understand them. Have to admit, it's not a bad tactic. If you get a LOTG quiz question and don't know the answer, just say avoid that situation by doing something else :)
 
Now that we know what you do in your scenarios, what would you do in my scenarios? If it makes it any easier let's say it is me who is the referee. What would you recommend me do? (in my scenarios, let's not change it so that i would avoid getting there because I am already in that situation)
Law 5 is one of the clearer bits of law . . . The referee may not change a restart decision on realising that it is incorrect or on the advice of another match official if play has restarted or the referee has signalled the end of the first or second half (including extra time) and left the field of play or abandoned the match.
 
Changed the scenario once again.

Look, I stuffed up and didn'r go with your advise and blew the whistle (or didn't give the right instructions). I am where I am. What should I do now?

I am not sure if you are avoiding answering the questions or don't understand them. Have to admit, it's not a bad tactic. If you get a LOTG quiz question and don't know the answer, just say avoid that situation by doing something else :)

I think I was clear and didn't change the scenario. I will repeat in case you missed it first time round

1) you have awarded the goal and blown the final whistle. Decision stands in law.

2) you have awarded the corner and blown the final whistle. No way in law you can change the decision (assuming no VAR protocol in the game you are doing).

I've sat and passed plenty of LOTG exams in my time, and whilst there have been some strange questions, I've never come across any situation as spurious as the scenarios you've created here - both of which have the same conclusion which is (and I'll repeat it again) "in law, you cannot change your decision once you've blown the final whistle"

There is however some advice on how you could avoid being in either scenario in the first place, which would be a good development discussion.
 
The wording posted above relating to a VAR intervention after the full-time whistle has been blown suggests that if a VAR/assistant tells the referee about an offence that occurred before the final whistle was blown then it can still be penalised - it seems it's only not possible to do that if the referee has left the field of play (as Law 5 indicates.)

But of course it would be very poor refereeing to blow for full time right after a goal being scored without seeing if the assistant had the flag up!
 
"in law, you cannot change your decision once you've blown the final whistle"
This is incorrect. Or at least I think it's incorrect. Happy to be corrected with references in law.

The only reference I can find is the decision can not change after the game has restarted and even that has some exceptions.


1) you have awarded the goal and blown the final whistle. Decision stands in law.
I don't see anything in law to support this. The reference I can give is from law 10. "
A goal is scored when ... provided that no offence has been committed by the team scoring the goal." Given there is an offence and play has not been restarted this goal should be disallowed


2) you have awarded the corner and blown the final whistle. No way in law you can change the decision (assuming no VAR protocol in the game you are doing).
This is a little more tricky. There is nothing in law to support your answer. However given the offence occurred (and signalled by AR) during the match and play has not restarted, the law allows for the game to be extended to complete a penalty.

We can agree to disagree but it's clear IFAB agrees with my line of thinking as per explaination in the protocol, if an AR in a game without VAR indicates an offence before full time, the referee can still take action. This fact has nothing to do with VAR.

As spurious as my scenario is, we had very similar scenario to mine in top flightb butthis time it was VAR who signalled the offence.
 
Law 5 is one of the clearer bits of law . . . The referee may not change a restart decision on realising that it is incorrect or on the advice of another match official if play has restarted or the referee has signalled the end of the first or second half (including extra time) and left the field of play or abandoned the match.
Highlighted the important part which excludes my scenario. We are still on the field of play.
 
Having reread the law I'll make an amendment:

1) disallow the goal for offside and rue my bad decision making process as I'm writing up the almost inevitable misconduct reports that would follow, especially if a match changing decision

2) I'd be sticking with the full time decision.
 
And I'll add:

1) whether you allow or disallow the goal, the game is over. You just need to manage the fallout

2) if you decide to overrule your AR its game over. If you decide to go with them, you award the penalty and then blow immediately at the conclusion of the PK.
 
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And I'll add:

1) whether you allow or disallow the goal, the game is over. You just need to manage the fallout

2) if you decide to overrule your AR its game over. If you decide to go with them, you award the penalty and then blow immediately at the conclusion of the PK.
I think we can agree on this one. :)
Although I wouldn't use the word overrule. It implies the AR has decision making authority.
 
Side note: I believe it was 2 or 3 years ago they added the “left the field” part. Prior to that, @Justylove ’s interpretation would have been —painfully—correct. (And that was one of the reasons that many advised to not blow for full time until after the KO.) while I think the change was VAR driven, it can mail us mere mortals out as well.
 
Whistle needed to be blown as soon as the save happened, in that case.
Can't do that(edit: well technically you can but would be wrong in law) . A match is extended to allow the taking of a penalty kick. The match is over once a penalty is complete. Penalty is complete when, the ball stops moving, goes out of play, or played by a player (excluding the goalkeeper).
 
In Justylove's second scenario, here's what I'm going to do.

1) First of all, I'll look at both of my ARs like I try to do on every restart. If I'm using comms, I'm talking to my ARs to make sure we don't have any issues. In no case am I blowing the full-time whistle before I confirm any issues with my ARs.
2) I will go over to my AR to confer, even with headsets. I want to know exactly what he has seen, as I want to have the information before making a final decision.
3) If I'm 100% sure of my decision, I will let the AR know I'm sticking with my call and living with the consequences. On this type of play, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get into the right angle to see something like this. If I'm not sure of my decision and my AR is 100% positive this happened, I'll go with his information. The AR would have to tell me he has absolutely no doubt. If there's ANY doubt, I'm sticking with my best call and dealing with the aftermath as I can. Admittedly, I'm probably not going to do this unless I've worked with the AR a lot and trust him/her.

In any of these cases, I won't blow a full time whistle until I know that we have everything straight. If this means I have to blow a whistle to delay things, I'll do that.

My primary goal is to get the call right - particularly if it's going to be a game-deciding call like this one. Marked down or not, I'd rather walk off the field knowing I've taken in all of the information I could to get the call right.

Regarding the "extension of time" scenario, this is my opinion only - I would like to see IFAB add language into Law 7 whereby if time is extended to complete a penalty kick that it basically turns into a kick from the mark type of penalty kick. Much of what we are discussing here would go away if the extension of time meant that there could be no rebound. I haven't seen the end of this match yet, but from what my friend told me Kavanagh was trying to get to this objective. However, the Laws really don't allow us to do that (and IMHO this led to a very badly managed situation).
 
Having spent the weekend reading/re-reading LOTG and the VAR handbook I have two thoughts on the Man Utd penalty:

1. The VAR handbook (clause 8.13, if you're interested) is very clear that the VAR can recommend a review after the referee has blown the final whistle for an incident that happened before the final whistle (and clearly in that final passage of the ball in-play, rather than the 60th minute) provided the referee has not left the field of play. Clearly, then the VAR and Kavanagh were correct to recommend a review for/subsequently award a penalty - it's also so blatant a penalty I think the on-field team will be a little disappointed to have missed it.

2. There is, to my knowledge, no complaint about the actual decision bar it being after the whistle. As I've explained, it was perfectly correct in law. The problem Kavanagh created for himself was the speed with which he view the final whistle. I think many (especially after that much added time) have blown the whistle immediately after the corner has gone in and been blocked/played, but he didn't see the handball and there was no time before he blew it for the VAR to tell him they were checking.

All of which is a long way of saying - they were correct to give the penalty but a key learning point for Kavanagh and PGMOL: in this new age of VAR at least give them time to tell you they're checking before you blow.
 
Having spent the weekend reading/re-reading LOTG and the VAR handbook I have two thoughts on the Man Utd penalty:

1. The VAR handbook (clause 8.13, if you're interested) is very clear that the VAR can recommend a review after the referee has blown the final whistle for an incident that happened before the final whistle (and clearly in that final passage of the ball in-play, rather than the 60th minute) provided the referee has not left the field of play. Clearly, then the VAR and Kavanagh were correct to recommend a review for/subsequently award a penalty - it's also so blatant a penalty I think the on-field team will be a little disappointed to have missed it.

2. There is, to my knowledge, no complaint about the actual decision bar it being after the whistle. As I've explained, it was perfectly correct in law. The problem Kavanagh created for himself was the speed with which he view the final whistle. I think many (especially after that much added time) have blown the whistle immediately after the corner has gone in and been blocked/played, but he didn't see the handball and there was no time before he blew it for the VAR to tell him they were checking.

All of which is a long way of saying - they were correct to give the penalty but a key learning point for Kavanagh and PGMOL: in this new age of VAR at least give them time to tell you they're checking before you blow.
But the problem is, the ball was still in play. He didn't have the option of stopping the game to see what happened, except by blowing full time or waiting and hoping the ball went out. If he was to delay blowing full time only because there was a chance of a VAR intervention, and Brighton then went up the other end and scored, or a Utd player lunged in to try and recover the ball and broke a leg or committed a red card tackle in the process, the consequences of then having to go back due to VAR are far more complex and messy.

Once he's missed that initial (incredibly difficult to spot IMO) handball, I'm not convinced there was much else they could have done. The VAR protocol allows for a decision to be reviewed post match - it absolutely does not suggest a match should be extended in order to allow a VAR review to take place during the match. The latter would be far less correct in law than what they did.
 
But the problem is, the ball was still in play. He didn't have the option of stopping the game to see what happened, except by blowing full time or waiting and hoping the ball went out. If he was to delay blowing full time only because there was a chance of a VAR intervention, and Brighton then went up the other end and scored, or a Utd player lunged in to try and recover the ball and broke a leg or committed a red card tackle in the process, the consequences of then having to go back due to VAR are far more complex and messy.

Once he's missed that initial (incredibly difficult to spot IMO) handball, I'm not convinced there was much else they could have done. The VAR protocol allows for a decision to be reviewed post match - it absolutely does not suggest a match should be extended in order to allow a VAR review to take place during the match. The latter would be far less correct in law than what they did.

I've got nothing against the referee waiting three seconds to be told 'checking', blowing a single whistle and indicating that a check is ongoing. Then he could either blow for full-time on hearing 'check complete' or as in this case go and have a look and award the PK. The game is thus over but the referee has made the sell easier by delaying the end of the game itself (though play is done) pending a review.
 
I've got nothing against the referee waiting three seconds to be told 'checking', blowing a single whistle and indicating that a check is ongoing. Then he could either blow for full-time on hearing 'check complete' or as in this case go and have a look and award the PK. The game is thus over but the referee has made the sell easier by delaying the end of the game itself (though play is done) pending a review.
Not a bad idea, but again, not AFIK permissible within the current protocols. And I think "three seconds" is a bit of a downwards exaggeration - the ball at that time was still bouncing around outside the Brighton box. If he leaves it 10 seconds because he thinks there's a chance someone might shout "checking" in his ear, it's then rifled in from 30 yards and he's later told there should NOT have been a penalty, what does he do then?

A guiding principal of VAR is that in theory, the match should initially be refereed in the same way it would without VAR. As soon as you're extending the match purely to allow for a check, you're abandoning that principal. What happened is perfectly sensible and understandable - if we didn't have thick pundits who have never heard of the LOTG bleating in the media that "he blew the full time whistle", this would look like an excellent use of VAR.

There are a lot of things wrong with how VAR is written and used. This isn't one of them.
 
I don't have the protocols at hand, but I'm pretty sure that the referee has the authority to stop play for review at a neutral time. I think the expiration of time makes it neutral regardless of anything that was happening, so he could have blown to stop play for the review rather than for full time.
 
I don't have the protocols at hand, but I'm pretty sure that the referee has the authority to stop play for review at a neutral time. I think the expiration of time makes it neutral regardless of anything that was happening, so he could have blown to stop play for the review rather than for full time.

That's what I mean. If the review comes to nothing then give it three blasts and go home, if its a PK then give it.
 
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