Ah interesting. I was actually going to ask this exact question after I had a.. I guess I can call it a query, with the captain of a team when I told him to take the ball back on an IDFK from an offside a couple weeks back.
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I don’t know if my markings make sense. But, the red on the sideline is the position of the CAR who flagged offside, who was quite old and had told me his knee was beginning to play up afterwards.
the offside offence occurred (from what I could see, where the yellow mark is, but the captain was trying to take the free kick from in line with the linesman, when I began to tell him “no, back where the offence occurred thanks” and then he began to argue, “it’s where the linesman is.” After a bit of a back and forth, he told me that I should go home and read the rules, had a bit of a baby tantrum, and decided to take the free kick from the pink mark in the penalty area.
I had my phone in my bag, and at half time, decided to “go home and read the rules” and came to the same conclusion you did one. So, I told him when the teams came back to the field that’s how I was enforcing it, because the free kick is taken “where the offence occurs”, and warned him that even though he is the captain, I won’t be taking too kindly to questioning my procedures like that again and that I won’t hesitate to sin bin for dissent if it happens again.
He ended up saying, “No you’re still wrong, but I’ll accept that’s how you’re doing it for this game.” And to his credit, I didn’t really have any problems at all with them in the second half (although a previous post outlines some red cards I dished out at the end of this game).
In hindsight.. I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that the player and I were both right: It is where the offence occurs, but the linesman really should be trying their best to mark in line with the offence, but at the end of the day, the referee in the middle of the field has overarching say on where that ultimately is. If I do end up officiating that team again, I will tell the captain as such, because in the instance outline above, to me it was quite obvious the CAR wasn’t marking in line with the offence, but rather where the second last defender was when the ball was kicked.