YOU INTERFERING WITH ME?

Thank heavens the offside rule has been changed again! No longer will a player standing in an offside position be penalised if he is not “interfering with play”. Much relies on the discretion of the officials of course.

In the recent past, the phrase “not interfering with play” was commonly quoted by referees even if a player was standing in direct line in the six yards box with the goalkeeper, as a shot was fired in.

A forward may also distract a defender by being marked by him but was still deemed not offside.

So the referee will have to judge whether a player has made a conscious effort to interfere with the ball or pattern of play to be deemed offside.

The ruling from the International Football Association Board enables referees to tweak last year's law and Mike Riley, the manager of the Professional Match Officials Board said that referees will still encourage attacking play.

The original offside law (pre 1863) suggested that a player would be “off his side” if he is standing in front of the ball. Passing therefore would have to be backwards or timed cleverly forward for a player to rush on to or what was known as a “pass through”.

Cambridge University Football rules in 1848 and later Shrewsbury School's football “rules” based on the light blues' laws, said that there must be three players between an attacker and the goal as he receives the ball. These were often adopted by other football associations.

The boys at Charterhouse school changed their ruling to two players early on. Charterhouse developed the “dribbling” game on their “fast and flat dry pitches” in London and later at Godalming so passing was not often an issue!

This number was later adopted by the FA in 1925 and the number of goals scored in the Football League increased by 50% following this change in 1925-6.

I saw an experimental offside law in the USA in the days of the New York Cosmos when you could only be offside in the final third of the pitch. Inevitably the game spread out along the pitch with centre forwards (Giorgio Cinaglia, the Italian centre forward, for example) lurking and being man marked on the “offside line”, one third of the pitch away from the opposing goal. Chaos.

I wonder what degree of interference there has to be for a player standing in a blatant offside to be penalised? We shall soon find out.