For many years, Law Four, Players Equipment, concentrated on football boots, although originally not insisting that they be worn. I think this was to encourage football to be played in poverty-stricken countries.
However, to be more precise, most of the Law was about boots studs. Older readers who played the game in their youth, may remember that the studs consisted of round thin strips of leather that were hammered into the sole of the boot with nails.
This could be more harmful to the wearer, as the nails often hammered through the sole.
Thankfully, today the studs are moulded onto the sole, and apart from one experiment some years ago where these were blades instead of round studs, they are now safe and almost superfluous to examination as the Law requires.
Next come socks which colours should be different for competing teams, but it’s what goes inside the socks, that is where there has been the biggest change to the Laws at this year’s IFAB AGM in March.
Shin guards were first introduced as far back as 1874. The first ones were cut down cricket pads, and I can remember when playing football at school, we would shove a folded comic down our socks.
It wasn’t until 1990 that shin guards became mandatory in the Law, which said that ‘these must be made of a suitable material to provide reasonable protection and must be covered by the socks’.
I know that referee’s, like myself, have warned players that they would not be allowed to play unless they were wearing shinpads.
I’m sure it’s not only IFAB that has noticed that quite a number of footballers this season have thrown protection for their shins to the wind, by wearing what can only be called ankle socks.
Remarkably, these house thin shin guards as referees have found out when checking players before taking to the pitch.
The IFAB has responded to this trend in perhaps an unexpected way. The Law now says, ‘Players are responsible for the size and suitability of their shinguards, which remain a compulsory part of their equipment’. Let them get sore shins if that’s what they want?
There is also another change to Law Four as well as Law Three, The Players. This says that ‘each team must have a team captain who wears an identifying armband’.
If this means it should say ‘Captain’, when you consider how many teams there are, not just in the country but throughout the world, that sounds a bonus for armband manufacturers.
By Dick Sawdon Smith
