OFFSET YOUR WORLD CUP TRAVEL WITH GREENERTRAVEL
Date: 14th May 2025
The fact that Nottingham Forest’s Taiwo Awoniyi had to be placed in an induced coma after abdominal surgery following his collision with a goalpost is bad enough. The fact that this happened because the linesman did not flag an obvious offside decision, but instead followed protocol and kept his flag down makes it much worse. Yet it wasn’t he lineman’s fault: it’s the laws of the game that are to blame – and particularly IFAB’s decisions to ignore the most important law of all – the unwritten Law 18, “Use your common sense.”
I wrote about how some of IFAB’s recent decisions have led to football changing in ways that I believe most fans find frustrating at best and downright boring at worst. Playing the ball out from goal kicks could be compared to an induced coma, because it’s entirely down to the way the laws are currently framed and, I don’t know about you, but it bores the pants off me and most of the people I speak to at games. In a recent blog, I made the point that fans’ views are not taken into account in relation to this, neither are they taken into account in some other critical aspects of the game. If they were, I suspect we would have to ditch VAR. But seriously, and given that it’s clear that different nations’ referees interpret some aspects of the law differently, can’t we have an outbreak of sanity in our country and get linesman to raise their flags when it’s obvious that a player is offside? Or do we have to wait for another player to be placed in an induced coma?
Posted in: Latest News
Tags: Refereeing