Football

Not playing the game

Hans Keller

A few years ago I gave a lecture on football law reform to an assembly of referees. I enjoyed it SO much that I was incapable of noticing whether it was a resounding failure. It probably was: at any rate, I had the vast majority contemptuously against me. The few who agreed with me were — no, not the young ones, but the oldest. That made me think: conservative youth. If you've just made it and feel Insecure, you join the establishment. If you are cin top of your job, you may be able to see the need for change. But if you've grown old lneanwhile, you've mastered the craft of °PPortunism: what's there is good, if only because you know,your way about it.

Thus, with constant support right across the generation gap, the world keeps going round rather than up in a spiral. Minor changes apart,

the football laws have, for generations, remained rigid, God-given, while the game itself has changed out of recognition. Inconsistencies are legion, and rather than do anything about them, we try to gloss over them by changing the interpretation of the laws; the result is another level of inconsistencies. An example right outside any current controversy. The rule covering the offence of handball is clearly covered by Law 12, Clause ,(I); 'A player who intentionally. . handles the ball, i.e. carries, strikes or propels the ball with

his hand or arm . . . shall be penalised by the

award of a direct free-kick'. First-level (legal) Inconsistency: there is no differentiation between a wilful interruption of the game and an Incidental offence against its rules. Second-level (procedural) inconsistency: nowa days, a player who catches the ball is invariably ea. ut1oned, whereas a player who commits an ,incidental handball offence isn't — although in law, both have committed precisely the same Offence, i.e. intentionally handled the ball. Take my thought a stage or two further. If You cripple an opponent by a tackle which is intended ntended to hurt him, which can be shown, or understood, to have been an (unsuccessful)

attempt to kick the ball, you go scot-free,

whereas if you catch the ball without harming a soul You are cautioned, although the Law only

Provides for four types of caution, none of them c°ncerned with catching the ball — unless it be a-ssumed that you are guilty of 'ungentlemanly conduct' when indulging in this activity, in Which case I don't know what's so gentlemanly about risking your opponent's limbs in an attempt to play the ball.

Indeed, if, without touching him, you raise ?'clur foot tummy-high in close combat, you are 'Playing in a manner considered by the referee to be dangerous', and you are penalised by the ard of an indirect free-kick, but if you break his leg in a so-called 'fifty-fifty ball', you are not Only a gentleman, but are considered not to have played dangerously. In virtually all dangerous play' decisions I have seen, nobody Was hurt, which means that if you hurt

somebody without fouling him, you can rely !Pon being considered not to have played

u.angerously. The moral: hurt, harass, intimi?late without fouling — without showing intent. All fouls must be intentional': one of Denis °well's 'comments' on Law 12 (he's merely

repeating it: Soccer Refereeing, London, 1968): 'It is impossible to jump accidentally at an opponent.' Very special pleading, this, from a leading referee and government minister: it is not impossible to trip an opponent accidentally, and you know it. None of this I said to the referees: I wanted to escape alive, so I confined myself to reformational thoughts which 1 (and only I) regarded as obvious. But a recent statement by a leading footballer has removed my residual inhibitions. John Craggs, the Middlesbrough defender, analysed the game in which his club achieved West Ham's first away defeat (to which West Ham effectively replied last Saturday): "We didn't allow them to play and, like most teams of their type, they were unable to compensate. One or two of their players dropped their heads when things started going against them."

The ultimate achievement: you don't allow people to play football, in the hope that they will be unable to 'compensate'. This inability to do something (strictly legal) instead of playing removed players like Jimmy Greaves, George Best and, most recently, Rodney Marsh from our clouded firmament. The times when a silent gentleman's agreement between opposing players ensured a free display of thought and skill are over — nowhere more decidedly so than in the country which introduced the concept of 'ungentlemanly conduct' (Law 12, Clause 4 (m)). The old joke, 'Never mind the ball, get on with the game', will soon be indistinguishable from a managerial instruction. But a law which makes possible the statement We didn't allow them to play' is itself lawless: the sole function of football law should be not to allow the players not to play — to prevent them from 'compensating', as Mr Craggs euphemistically has it.

The problem is that of the nature of skilful and imaginative interception — the kind of constructive defence which the Brazilians last practised in the 1970 World Cup, and which Portugal showed us last week. Now, as soon as Law 12, Clause (I) — 'playing in a manner considered by the referee to be dangerous' — were to apply, not only to dangerous play that might have resulted in injury, but also to dangerous play that actually has, it would no longer be possible not to allow a side to play.

At the moment, the law book's one pitiable example of dangerous play is, in its own English, 'attempting to kick the ball while held by the goalkeeper'. But if you attempt to kick a ball shielded by an opponent in a way which, if you fail, reliably produces a double fracture, you aren't guilty of any infringement at all, unless you 'intentionally throw him or attempt to throw him by the use of the legs or by stooping in front of or behind him', in which case it's unlikely, anyway, that you attempt to kick the ball at the bottom of it all. In short, all demonstrably dangerous play should be 'considered by the referee to be dangerous': legal and procedural reform rolled into one. Just consider that we have reached the stage where one's got to write an article about this daring proposition — so daring that I dared not mention it to the refs.