A well known assessor was watching, not there to assess, but as usual comes over at the end and offers advice. Said I "should have cautioned for the shirt coming off, as soon as the shirt is removed it's a caution". I could have for dissent? I do feel he was frustrated at himself rather than me and didn't gesture it in anyway towards me. I had no problems all game and the penalty was the only incident of any note throughout the game.
I know plenty of 'well known assessors' who are dangerously incompetent. Your assessor needs to read the laws - they only mandate a caution if it's in celebration of a goal.
Having said that, your local area may have a directive/comp rule that would require a caution (such as my area requires a caution for a player wearing jewellery or not wearing shinpads)
With hindsight, I may have got it wrong. I'm not overly concerned by it, else I wouldn't have put myself up for scrutiny by my fellows on here.
Removing your shirt in any non-goalscoring even is situational. It's up to your assessment of the incident as to whether it requires a caution.
Now, if you turned around and he was putting his shirt on and not involved in play, then you can let it slide. But he's become involved in play not wearing a shirt - that's quite a major breach of Law 4!!
Obviously you can't allow play to continue (I'm assuming nobody advocating against a caution is saying that play should have continued here?), so how do we handle the restart?
There's no IFK offence under Law 4, so the only 2 options are the IFK + Caution (for any other offence not previously listed), or a drop ball.
Given that you're stopping play as a direct result of a player's actions in breaching Law 4, I don't think a drop ball is suitable. Therefore, caution and IFK. I think the player left you with no choice here!!
Having said that, I'd agree with the others that perhaps you could have asked him why first. If he's telling you he thought he got bit by something, then I think you can make the argument that the actions aren't his fault, thus drop ball. If he, say, was simply removing an undershirt...well, nothing specifically wrong with that, but you're going to make a judgement on whether he appeared to be trying to put his jersey back on or not.
Does he have to leave the FOP?
I think not. The Laws state that you don't need to stop play but you can direct him to leave the FOP to correct his equipment. That is, the passage that says he must leave the FOP is specifically referencing a situation where play is continuing and you've told him to leave.
The laws then state that when play is stopped the player must leave unless it's been corrected.
Here, play was stopped because of the equipment issue, but he's corrected it in the time you've been talking to him and cautioning him. I don't think either passage in the law explicitly covers this scenario - and also consider the spirit of the law; telling him to leave the FOP to do absolutely nothing just seems silly.
As for everybody who has argued that he must leave the FOP, I'm calling you out. Every one of you.
I'm sure you've all had a situation where play has stopped for whatever reason, and a player is reattaching his shinpad or boot that's gone flying off. When ball is out of play immediately after a challenge is the more likely scenario - possibly from a foul. In that case are you going to tell that player to leave the FOP to put his shoe or shinpad back on? I doubt you've even considered it
I had something similar on the weekend but I was slightly compassionate to the situation. Everyone was kitted up for really cold weather with the majority of players having under shirts on (including myself). It turned out to be mild with sunny spells and about 5 players took their shirts off (within a 10 minute period) when the ball was out of play. I didn't think it warranted a caution (or 5 in this case) but it did cross my mind. I did instead order the players to leave the field of play and warned the captains this shouldn't happen without my attention.
Would I really have been pulled up for this by an assessor?
Where do people stand with gloves for the icey days...? (que abuse)
This is perfectly fine - absolutely no justification for a caution here. gloves? Who cares? Players wearing them, refs wearing them, who cares!
Only by a really anal one (IMO).
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I'd correct that to saying 'only by an incompetent one'