Footie Rule Change

[reverse_side]

Who's just sussed how to use the Poll feature then!

Just summat we discussed in the pub; how about a rule change in football where the linesman or lineswoman needn't flag a ball out of play if it swerves back into play - similar to tennis.

(it's Law 9 – The Ball IN AND OUT OF PLAY, and we're ignoring calling the officials assistan referees in this thread! Rules are avaiable from FIFA website as HTML or a 1MB PDF http://www.fifa.com/en/regulations/r...584,3,00.html# )

[reverse_side]

There's 2 FOR and 1 AGAINST at the moment in this poll, but as we saw from the Liverpool Vs Spurs game today, we'd've had more goals to celebrate; let's ignore any potential Crouch climbing shall we.


There's not a single reason I can think of why we should retain this rule; what point does it serve? About as much as the ridiculous back-pass-rule... if a ref thinks a team is wasting time by too frequently passing the ball back and forth to the 'keeper, just book them and it would remove an unnecessary rule

Other Rulebook changes could be...

1. take out the one where the ball's got to roll a full circumference at a centre circle restart,
2. make the 10 yard dissent advance optional, or at least anywhere from 0-10 yards or even better... move it anywhere within 10 yards of the offence to allow a player to move it backwards.
3. stop a player being offside if by the time a player receives the ball he's come back onside or at least give the benefit of the doubt to the striker or properly define which part of the body is used for the decision or just enforce a decision when there's daylight,

some other ideas

1. get rid of friendlies & replace them with Home Internationals [although friendlies DO actually affect your Fifa ranking],
2. make a linesman block a player from creeping and encroaching too far up the touchline when taking a throw-in,
3. introduce sin-bins,
4. have goaline cameras; use what technology we currently have not invent something new that the grassroots won't use any more thatn they will tv cameras
5. only allow players from the same team to restrain or even touch each other after a referees decision is causing aggressive & physcial confrontations.
6. Convene an Officials Seminar and invite Rugby Refs to explain how they impose their total-control-reffing,
7. Get the FA to use some subversive & lateral thinking advisors to give the ref more power to control a game by introducing some extra rules E.G. after a nastty foul just outside the box offer the attacking side an option of a free kick without a wall, or a running free-kick where the defenders are replaced in their original positions that does NOT give them a chance to re-group infront of the attacking side, for a violent transgression the opposing Captain could be given the choice of either having that player sent off and/or having 2 further players sin-binned for 5 or 10 minutes etc, make a rule up where a Captain can be sin-binned if it's not clear who the perpetrator of a foul is, allow a team to choose who to send off if a foul is so atrocious,
8. have video refs that can advise the ref to award yellow cards for any offence at any point through the game; an 'all-seeing-eye' would catch more offences and put a huge amount of pressure on players NOT to foul their opponents.
9. spread the wealth of the game to all corners of the sport.

The Welsh FA actually wanted to propose a rule change such that a player could only be offside if they were INSIDE the 18 yard box - they withdrew the idea befire having it discussed.

"All progress depends on the unreasonable man"