BILLY BREMNER MEMORIAL JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN
Date: 11th February 2025
The SFA comes in for quite a few brickbats, sometimes fairly, sometimes not, but there is no doubting its key role in the development of the laws of the game from the very beginning of organised football. This principally came about as a result of the formation of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) in June 1886. Two representatives from each of the four home nations (Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland) met and agreed to form a body (IFAB) that would oversee the rules for all. It’s worth noting that this was several years before the founding of the Scottish Football League, so the laws that applied in the first league season in Scotland were, in effect, the same as those that applied across the rest of the UK (which in those days included Ireland).
Even allowing for Scotland’s leading position as one of the four founding (and permanent) members of IFAB, it’s clear that the country has, in many respects, had considerable influence in formulating the Laws of the game. Overall, the SFA made 181 proposals to IFAB between 1887 and 2009. Of these, just over one third (66) were accepted, although quite a few of these were technical alterations. Here are a couple of examples of some of the most important…
In 1892, the SFA proposed that a player could only strike the ball once from a penalty kick, or, as the wording had it, “repeated touching of the ball by the player taking the kick is prohibited.” This was accepted and is still the law today.
Then there was offside. The source of the most contentious disagreements in the game (until the introduction of VAR), offside was originally adopted from the rugby/handling form of the game. This meant that in the 1860s, a player was offside if, upon receiving the ball from a forward pass, three opponents were between him and the goal-line. A proposal to change to two players was mooted by the publication “The Scottish Referee” in 1893, then in 1902 the SFA put a similar proposal to IFAB. It was rejected, but the SFA came back with other ideas over the years. In 1907, it was agreed (the original idea came initially from Clyde FC in 1905) that a player could not be offside in his own half of the pitch as had previously been the case, and then in 1920 it was no longer the case that you could be offside from a throw-in.
Of course, the idea behind the offside law is to prevent players hanging around near the opponents’ goal and thus stretching the game out. A few minutes thought and it ought to be obvious that without some form of offside law much of the subtlety and strategy of the game would disappear. More specifically, a match would end up being just a long-ball game with defenders holding back in a defensive mass to mark forwards who were ‘goal-hanging’ in the hope of gaining an advantage. Despite this, there have been a number of attempts to introduce changes that drastically modified or did away with offside. Over the years, IFAB and FIFA have authorised a number of trials, often involving an arbitrary distance from the goal, outwith which it was not possible for a player to be offside. These included (amongst others) the following:
In 1920, there was a Scottish proposal to IFAB that offside should only apply within 25 yards of the goal. This was rejected, as was a much later request from Scotland in 1974 to try this as an experiment. Similar proposals from Scotland and England that offside should apply from 40 yards out were rejected in 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1929. Intriguingly, I was made aware of how one of these proposals had been trialled in a match involving St Johnstone in February 1925, when we can read in the Perthshire Advertiser that Saints were due to play a friendly against Cowdenbeath and:
“Importance, will, however, be given to the match in respect of the fact that it has been decided to play under the new offside rule. The rule provides for a player becoming offside forty yards from the goal, instead of as at present midfield. In all likelihood Scottish Football Association officials will be present to view the experiment, as it will be made for the first time in Scotland.
“It was tried in England on Saturday at a game between Clapton and Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Mr. J. T. Howcroft, of Bolton, who had charge of the match, expressed himself as delighted with the success of the experiment.”
A later edition of the Dundee Courier (as shown in our cutting) noted that:
“It can be taken as granted that Mr A A Edwards, one of the inspectors of the SFA, will report favourably regarding the demonstration of the proposed 40 years offside rule at the friendly match between St Johnstone and Cowdenbeath. This was the impression gathered by a representative of the Courier in an interview with Mr Edwards at the conclusion of play.”
Whatever Mr Edwards eventually reported, it doesn’t seem to have passed muster because, as noted above, the proposal was not agreed by IFAB.
Then, in 1925, the SFA’s perseverance was rewarded, when their proposal that Law 14 (offside) should change to a “Reduction to two opponents nearer their own goal line,” was accepted. That is still Law 14 today. So the next time you feel like berating a lino for raising (or not raising) his flag, remember that Scotland, and specifically the SFA, played a key part in the creation of some of the most important laws of the game. Could we now hope for a proposal to stop using VAR..?
Alastair Blair, Director of Operations, SFSA
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Tags: Refereeing