It’s funny how trying to make the Laws of the Game more understandable, sometimes seems to create more arguments.
A prime example is handball. The Law has always put handball into two categories, accidental or deliberate.
Referees were told to take into consideration, the movement of the hand towards the ball (and not the ball towards the hand), the distance between the opponent and the ball (unexpected ball) and that the position of the hand does not necessarily mean there has been an infringement,
Many people thought this was not clear enough and made handball too subjective, so the Law on handball was basically re-written.
This turned out to be highly controversial and in a ‘step back’, most changes were rescinded the next season.
The introduction of VAR seemed to many people to result in more handballs being given when the ball had hit a player’s shoulder.
Whether this was fact, I don’t know, but the International Football Association Board added another clarification in 2020 that read ;’For the purposes of determining handball, the upper boundary of the arm, is in line with the bottom of the armpit’.
They illustrated this with the drawing seen below. Unfortunately, because the arm has two colours, many thought the upper part of the arm represents a shirt sleeve, I heard referees say, clubs will buy shirts with longer sleeves and in discussing West Ham’s recent late equaliser against Leicester, one pundit on Sky Sports said, ‘ if it was me I would wear shirts with longer sleeves’.
This of course is nonsense. When explaining this Law, I put one arm down by my side and with the other hand put my thumb under the armpit, and then grasp my arm with my fingers straight out.
What’s above my first finger is shoulder and what’s below is arm. Try it out. The IFAB have confirmed that my interpretation is correct.
I have suggested that it would be better if in the drawing, the arm was not in colour but simply white with the demarcation line drawn in black.
David Elleray, Director of the Technical Committee of IFAB, has told me that they are already planning such a change.
By Dick Sawdon Smith
