To The Letter of The Law, But Outside Its Spirit

There was unanimity among those I was standing with while watching the Manchester derby in the bar before the Jersey Bulls v Romford game last Saturday that United’s equaliser by Bruno Fernandes should have been disallowed for offside against Marcus Rashford, and there was incredulity when the goal was allowed.

It was widely held that Rashford was both seeking to gain an advantage and was interfering with play, but in saying so, most people were quoting from a half-remembered version of the offside law that no longer applies. The offside law has changed so frequently in recent years that very few of us have been able to keep up with those changes. But none the more for that, there were good reasons why the goal should have stood…but reasons why it should not have too. With offside calls, it’s possible for the decision to be simultaneously wrong, and right.

The concept of gaining an advantage has changed over the years such that this is deemed to have occurred only when a player who is in an offside position plays the ball after it has rebounded off a post, or bar, or an opponent, but not merely by their lurking in an offside position.

As for interfering with play, Rashford could only have been deemed to have been doing so if he had touched the ball – which he didn’t - or if he prevented an opponent from playing the ball, or made an action that impacted on the ability of an opponent to play the ball, and he didn’t do either of those things, so therefore he was unequivocally not offside. Or was he?

Two eminent former referees could not agree on the decision in the aftermath. Keith Hackett had no doubt; “Rashford is offside,” he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph. “To allow Fernandes’s goal to stand is a total nonsense.”

Being in an offside position is not an offense in itself of course, but Hackett goes on to say that Rashford was offside because he was “clearly attempting to play a ball which is close” (Law 11, section 2). Hackett also rightly pointed out that Darren McCann, the assistant who flagged Rashford offside, is one of the most experienced in world football. McCann has given more offside decisions than most of us have had hot dinners and got the vast majority of them right too. Hackett would therefore have supported McCann’s decision.

Meanwhile, speaking on Sky Sports, another former top-class referee, Dermot Gallagher opined that had he been the man in the middle, he would have stuck by assistant Darren McCann’s flag and called Rashford offside. But he then went on to say that referee Stuart Attwell would, from the view that he had, have formed the opinion that Rashford had not impacted on his opponents and was therefore not offside, hence him allowing the goal.

Gallagher also said that this was not a factual offside, but was a subjective one. Which tends to support a view that I have held for a long while: Offside decisions can be given that are technically correct, but which are morally, ethically, and subjectively, completely wrong. To avoid that conflict, and to return to Keith Hackett, “The law is awful and requires a complete rewrite.”

In this instance, because Rashford does not touch the ball, he is not technically offside. The ball however, is clearly within playing distance – defined in the laws as “(the) Distance to the ball which allows a player to touch the ball by extending the foot/leg or jumping,” and as it was within Rashford’s playing distance, there is a strong argument that he was in possession of the ball and therefore technically offside as well as subjectively so.

The Twitterverse has come up with a number of examples from seasons past where players in similar positions to Rashford’s have been given offside, but these are largely irrelevant as the laws have changed since some of these incidents occurred.

Although I would agree with Darren McCann’s decision to raise his flag and say that the goal ought to have been ruled out, I can see both sides of the argument in much the same way as Dermot Gallagher did. I suppose the acid test is, if my team conceded an identical goal, would I accept it graciously, or would I argue in favour of it being disallowed? The answer is that I would be spitting feathers! 

As a result, we’re back to the subjectivity of it all, and the biggest problem with that is – and I’ve said this before – that football is quite precious about having laws, and laws should not be contradictory, laws should not be subjective. To put it bluntly, laws must be objective, so in this I fully support Keith Hackett’s point of view; the law is an ass and needs a rewrite.

One could sum up this decision by say that while it was correct within the letter of the law, it was clearly not within its spirit, a consideration that the laws say that referees must apply when making a decision.

One controversial decision in one game in one country is unlikely to be enough to prompt a change in the law. It could result in a change in the way it is interpreted in England, although the fact that the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) - the body responsible for referees in the Premier League - have backed Stuart Attwell’s decision suggests that that might not be the case.

At some point in the near future, the offside law will change – again – and just about the only thing we can be certain of is that the change won’t add clarity but will simply produce more grey areas and more subjectivity to the decision making. That’s something to look forward to.