Handball law suggestion

[Wilson80]

Hi all, I've just published this piece with my ideas for a modified approach to the handball law:

Time to try again on handball?​

The essence of it is for referees to pair an assessment of avoidability with an assessment of whether and to what an extent an advantage was gained from the handball.

This means complementing the existing approach with a fairness test, which is something I think a lot of people would welcome.

I'm very keen to hear your feedback on the suggestion!

 

[bester]

Every attempt to solve handball complicates it, we now have the other complication that laws are being rewritten to suit VAR.

Nice idea but I'd cast this one away.

 

[Wilson80]

Thanks, Bester.

Yes I recognise over-complication as a danger and something many people are very much against, for good reasons. I don't really think this suggestion adds complexity though, and the idea is to produce fairer outcomes.

How do you think the law should work?

 

[RustyRef]

Interesting theory, but wouldn't that just put even more human interpretation into the mix. How long would it take to decide what the xG of the shot was, or what the percentile for avoidability was?

My opinion is still put it back to how it was 20 years ago, the referee just decides if he felt it was an intentional attempt or not. And yes, I realise that still relies on human interpretation but they've spent years trying to fix something that wasn't a huge problem, unarguably making it worse along the way, so why not just go back to how it was before the tinkering started? It wouldn't be perfect, but it couldn't really be any worse than it is now.