BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MikeL2
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 06:53 AM

hi dave

I couldn't agree more.

It is the same rule for both sides and I know that there are some "iffy" decisions but in the end they tend to cancel themselves out.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 09:56 AM

Your mention of LBW is interesting, Dave, because altho it is essential in justice for the concept to exist, it too has got so hedged around with piddling exceptions & otiose details that it wants a good deal of SIMPLIFICATARY tidying up. The offside rule, OTOH, doesn't ~~ it is no way essential for equity like LBW, & simply, IMO obviously, wants doing away with. You 2, MikeL & Dave, I know disagree, which is fair enough; but I do think serious consideration should be given to this.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MikeL2
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 10:58 AM

hi dave & MtheGm

MtheGM - I do not believe that the game is in any way - both for the players and spectators - detrimentally affected by the present off-side rule. As a great believer in the "If it ain't broke don't fix it" philosophy I say leave well alone.

As an ex-cricketer I think you both may have a point with LBW. As an opening batsmanI have had many an afternoon spoiled by a white-coated official who didn't understand the rule properly. My son who followed in my footsteps has been known to throw his bat through the pavillion window when having been given out LBW when he wasn't....lol true !!!

Having said that it is a very difficult set of rules to understand and even with the help of Hawkeye etc they still get it wrong.

So though I would be an advocate of changing the rule I haven't a clue what I would do to improve it, unless you did away with it altogether.???

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 03:30 PM

As so often, the great Flashman as edited by Geo MacDonald Fraser had it right: 'It should just be, "If the umpire thinks the ball would have hit the wicket if the batsman's leg hadn't got in the way, then he's out. If he doesn't, then he isn't. And that's all."'

What could be clearer?

Now put your mouth where &c & solve the old offside bummo as efficiently as that. Becoz I disagree profoundly with you:

IT IS IMO THOROUGHLY BROKE BEYOND HOPE OF FIXING.

As well as profoundly unnecessary and frustrating and in every way detrimental to the true spirit of the game.

So sucks·boo!

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MikeL2
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 03:56 PM

hi

< Now put your mouth where &c & solve the old offside bummo as efficiently as that. Becoz I disagree profoundly with you:>

No being as you appear to know it all, I will leave it to you.

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 10:20 PM

Ooohhh, hoity-toity!, MikeL2.

Definitely Unacceptable ··· Or Out Of Order ··· Or OFFSIDE ···

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MikeL2
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 05:07 AM

hi MtheGM

Me hoity toity !!! Shades of kettle and black come to mind here.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: mayomick
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 05:23 PM

You're right to say that opposition from the big clubs shouldn't be an issue MtheG .
But I still think that the rule change would be too much of a change -it would be more like changing the game rather than just changing a rule. The rule was introduced in the game's infancy ,as you said , to stop goal-hanging. You say that the game could surely develop techniques to obviate goal-hanging .I don't know how you can be so sure.

The game's history and everyday experience of playing without the rule show that football played "naturally" gravitates to goal-hanging . That was how they found things in football's infancy and that's why they introduced the rule . The introduction of the off-side rule altered the game to allow football to become the great sport it is today. To change the rule would have as big an impact to the game as its original introduction . That's why I'd urge caution.

Why are Fifa introducing the change in lower divisions ? I haven't trusted that lot since they made a proposal a few years ago to look into the possibiity of altering the length of the game so that there could be breaks every twenty minutes to allow for advertising slots. That was when they were trying to get America to take the sport seriously. Seriously.

To the Americans reading this. I know y'all aren't happy unless you have goals, goals, goals ,but don't let the offie abolishionists fool you into thinking that it's the rule that's stopping the goals thundering into the back of the nets. The reason why there aren't so many goals these days is because they haven't got Jimmy Greaves playing anymore .Pure and simple.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 08:26 PM

"...it doesn't ruin American football..."

There's an implied assumption in that which not everyone would agree with.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 08:37 PM

Maybe someone could explain what kind of techniques could be dreamed up which would "obviate goal hanging" without screwing up the game in other ways.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Mar 10 - 06:36 AM

McGrath ~ that would be for the coaches & the players to work on. Whatever resulted during the inevitable transition period, which modern playing techniques would surely find a way round, would have to be an improvement on the present inordinate dog's-breakfast of a frustrating, over-complex, widely misunderstood, inconsistently & often [as replays constantly show] inaccurately enforced rule.

There are, I repeat, precedents. When Moscow Dynamo toured UK just after WWii, no offside was used at that time in Soviet football; so the rule was set aside by agreement for all matches. The result was an unprecedented excitement at the brilliance of their co-operative short-passing game; which, by general agreement, just would not have worked if offside had been in force. This suspension of the rule produced, in short, fast, exciting, creative play, the very opposite of goal-hanging.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 06 Mar 10 - 08:13 AM

When they played the famous game of football between the trenches in the first world war they probably didn't use the off-side rule either ,and everyone agreed that was a great game as well. You keep repeating the same precedent(s) MtheG. That business about Moscow Dynamo is interesting as an anecdote but very short on detail .How come the Soviet Union adopted the off-side rule if the game played their way was so exciting ? Couldn't the Russians have sent the tanks in and introduced their exciting brilliant short-passing game to the eastern bloc when they were in charge there ? If it was that good they wouldn't have needed the tanks.

I'd say that the anti-abolishinists are up by about 2-1 on this thread, by the way . Not bad seeing as we're playing away from home on the abolishinists own thread. A bit of an own goal there from me yesterday ,but I did put my hands up to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 06 Mar 10 - 08:31 AM

Here's another one . The sports commentators would have to come up with a whole new bunch of clichés wouldn't they?
I got that one in quick while the oppo were still recovering from my last volley . 3-1 now by my reckoning.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 07 Mar 10 - 04:53 AM

The same subject was being debated on BBC Sport's Football 606 forum last week and generally the idea was considered to be a non - starter over there too.
In a way we benefited from the rule yesterday as when the original ball which won us a corer from which we scored our 91st minute winner there was the issue that Dexter Blackstock was offside when the ball was played but he was not encroaching on the play. Split seconds later he was and we won a corner. BBC's "Football League Show" made a big thing about this last night. Similarly they showed the possible penalty against us which wasn't given; I was right on top of that one and I wouldn't like to call it - the chap on my right swore it was a dive while son in law on my left was convinced that it was a stonewall penalty (had it been a Forest player in Sawnsea's penalty area there would have been no doubt!!).
There were plenty of the same type of talking points yesterday from the Portsmouth v Birmingham and Newcastle v Barnsley matches all bringing goal line technology and giant screen 4th/5th referees once again into the equation.
However the game has existed and thrived on such controversy and long may it do so; what would we have to talk about in the pub afterwards if it was gone?

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Mar 10 - 05:25 AM

Dave ~ why, diving; and players' hairstyles; & wags; & refs' & linesmen's defective eyesight generally: plenty to talk about without persisting in ruining the flow and atmosphere of the game with outdated & otiose hangovers from the game's very infancy...

I mean, seriously: the traditional rules get altered & modified all the time: I recall {& I was a goalkeeper 60 years ago} when a goalkeeper was fair game for shoulder-charging into the net as he was off-balance while catching the ball ~ now it's practically a foul to look at him from any less than 5 yards away; you could backpass for the goalkeeper to catch or pick up; sliding tackles used to be respected as skilful ~ now they are liable to bring a red card. All these alterations {except perhaps that goalkeepers are now grotesquely over-protected}, I think it would be generally agreed, have improved matters rather than the opposite.

I genuinely think getting rid of offside would too. Surely it would be worth trying, worldwide, for an experimental season, followed by an online symposium of all interested parties as to whether it would then be revived or not ~ Followed by a definitive decision by FIFA?

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MikeL2
Date: 07 Mar 10 - 06:11 AM

hi dave

I agree with you.

I watched three matches yesterday.

I am a Man U fan and was at the game at Wolves yesterday. We were lucky to get away with a win. But the season has gone on like this for us most of the time. We haven't really played well all season and yet there we are on top of the league and having won more games than anyone else. Makes you think.

I watched two other cup games that I had recorded.

In watching these games I could not see any case to be made for changing the off-side rule. There were some minor calls like you will get in every game but the games flowed and while none of them were show stoppers they were exciting and kept the fans on their toes.

Ironically there was the incident in the Portsmouth game where Birmingham claimed that they had scored from Ridgewell's header.
I watched it as it happened I did not think that the ball had crossed the line. Replays and slow motion proved me wrong.

I say ironic because earlier that yesterday Sep Blatter and his FIFA henchmen had voted against the proposed use of technology as an aid to referees.

This I do find puzzling.

cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Mar 10 - 03:27 PM

I'm sure tactics would be developed to match any change in the rules. But it seems likely that the winning tactic would be likely to involve a kind of ping-pong afair with goalhangers at both ends paired off with hatchet-men dfenders, and a succesion of long balls from end to end.

It might be interesting to find out, but the best way might be to have a breakaway league playing a modified code, the same way you have two codes in Rugby.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MikeL2
Date: 08 Mar 10 - 07:03 AM

hi Mcgrath

There are reports that some trial games with no off-side have been tried in Scotland as well as some in Europe but they are not well documented.

The fact that nothing has been reported officially probably means that the trials didn't prove anything.

cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 02:03 PM

r

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 03:30 PM

I can remember when footy fans used to disparrage Jimmy Greaves calling him a 'goal sniper'. The nature of the game has changed a lot these days and 'goalmouth skills' are earnestly discussed and compared.

I think whatever you do with the game - the skilled players will fit their game to it, with ruthless efficiency. If we did this reform, would we see 'Bobby Charlton run' - where a player with amazing dribbling skill single handedly took the opposite team on and beat them individually.

Playing a percentage game, i think most trainers would change the basic tactic to the longball game.But there will always be players who are capable of that magic 'break', and unable to resist the temptation to show off - and if they did away with the offside - these guys would save the game.

They would be in the same position as Jimmy White and the late Alex Higgins were in snooker - they won't be the highest paid or the higheat scorers, but they will represent everything that is attractive and worth watching about the game.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Kenny B (inactive)
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 06:13 PM

It would never get the support of press or pundits, they would have too little / even less to talk about.

mmm maybe they should abolish it after all

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 06:21 PM

I just noticed this thread and was quite surprised that the game HAS rules.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Nick
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 07:27 PM

Here's a thought

Why not have great looking women in all parts of the game because the highly paid, but yet suprisingly but enormously moral, players wouldn't abuse them

No. That doesn't work.

Probably work in a quiet, refined sport like golf.

Perhaps attractive ladies are drawn to soccer (football) because of the intricacies of the offside rule. I understand that it has many similarities to the rules of lacrosse which again probably explains its attraction.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 03:43 AM

Howsabout we all accept that many mudcatters and female linesmen don't understand the offside rule and leave it at that?

M'Unlearned friend even suggested in the third entry here that something called association football was abolished. It was, when it dropped the "association" bit and became the glorious game.

Up the Owls!



(ps. The bit about the female linesman? Well... as Andy Gray pointed out she was female, it made it a sexist issue, and rightly so, he was castigated. Although sacking him for having sexist views is nothing. I always wanted him sacking for having football views... He never did like The Wednesday... . However, I can confirm that when she ran the line at Hillaborough the other year, she was always 10 yard behind play and was being booed for being crap, not being a woman.)

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:33 AM

As the laws of Association Football are derived from those of the Cambridge University Foot Ball Club, are they actually intended to be understandable by those without a university education?

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:39 AM

I've got one, thanks Dave ~~ from Cambridge University at that. And I still think the offside rule is a thoroughly dispensable mess.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 06:48 AM

Kylie Minogue was asked once to explain the offside rule, she didn't do us girls any favours by explaining it in a so called 'girly' fashion and when she finished I was none the wiser. So yes abolishing it altogether would make sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 07:44 AM

Blatter is talking to the Field Hockey people about this. Field Hockey abolished offside in 1998 and it seems to have improved the game greatly, especially when played on Astroturf.
Field Hockey Laws

I am using the title Field Hockey to distinguish it from Ice Hockey for North American readers.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 08:47 AM

The old Field Hockey rules look like they simply copied from the FA. The rule in Hockey and Shinty is basicly thta you are offside if you cross a line on the field or pitch before the ball or puck.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 10:20 AM

"LET`S CHANGE THE RULES" is the usual sanctuary of those too thick or dis-honest to play to them or understand them. If the decisions of referees and linesmen/women were accepted without contention, bearing in mind, everybody on the field is human and subject to it`s frailties, then the image of the "beautiful game" would be enhanced.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 10:47 AM

No-one's got that Shankly quote right, but I won't dwell. Instead, and more apropos, is this one of his: "If a player is not interfering with play or seeking to gain an advantage, then he should be."

The offside rule is excellent and the game would be intolerably dull without it. The challenge is to apply it well. Apart from the issue alluded to above, the assistant ref has to be looking at two things at once, the position of the receiving player and the ball at the instant it's passed to that player. Not only that, it's impossible for the assistant ref to maintain a parallel line of sight at all times. You're always going to have these marginal issues in sport (look at LBWs and caught-behinds in cricket and how even sophisticated technology struggles with them) and the spirit of the thing must always be to accept that occasional wrong calls will be made and you put up with it in a sporting manner.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 01:44 PM

Online Ad for Soccerprint t-shirt

== This Liverpool Bill Shankly Life and Death Quote T-Shirt features Bill Shankly's famous and often repeated quote....

"Football's not a matter of life or death. It's much more important than that." ==

Precisely as I quoted it above.

What convinces you that you know everything so much better than everyone else, eh, Steve?

Disagree profoundly with you about how game would be dull without offside rule. I think it reduces the game to dullness by inhibiting fast and open play. In what way, out of interest, do you find it enhances the excitement of the game?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 02:24 PM

Sigh. I don't know anything better than anyone else, Michael. I simply googled the bloody thing and got it straight from Liverpool FC's website in about thirteeen and a half seconds flat. Anyone purporting to quote a quote from some half-remembered source is just bloody lazy, to be honest. Here it is: Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.

As for the offside rule, it prevents players from standing next to the goalkeeper waiting for the ball to be punted up more in hope than with skill. You wanna watch a game with that happening every two minutes and I'm not with you. It also allows an extra level of skill to be employed by the defending team via the high-risk strategy of employing the offside trap, which adds to the scope for actually employing tactics instead of just encouraging aimless and tedious booting of the ball up half the length of the pitch. Got England a long way, didn't it? Wasn't it such a joy to watch?

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 02:34 PM

Anyway, what's so wrong with the short-passing game? Barca do it and the Spanish national team did it superbly in the World Cup Final. Like everybody else I like a bit of drama and bombast but I also like to see the full gamut of footballing skills being elegantly employed. But then I'm of that Matthews/Finney/Douglas/McIlroy-watching generation.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 03:48 PM

"Some people think football is a matter of life and death ... I can assure them it is much more serious than that."

In 'Sunday Times' 4 October 1981 (according to 'The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Revised Fourth Edition, 1996. I suspect that he might have used it in different forms on more than one occasion.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 04:06 PM

I'm a simple man. I'll stick with the thing nearest to the horse's mouth, the indomitable Liverpool FC.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 05:42 PM

Nothing wrong with the short-passing game. Anyone old enough to recall a bit of history will remember this was intro'd par excellence here by Moscow Dynamo in their tour here just after the War: but it only worked because, as USSR had no offside rule at the time, offside was suspended for the tour ~~ otherwise the final pass of one of their manoeuvres would always have caught the last man offside. Short passing & offside are NOT incompatible. A decent game of soccer & offside are, to my mind: it is the reason the game doesn't flow as it could if allowed to develop naturally.

I mean, fancy making a virtue of the devious bit of finagling known as the offside trap. Ugh!

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 06:15 PM

One problem is the change in attitude towards the laws of the game (and this applies to all codes). Originally it was assumed that everybody knew how to play the game, and laws were only introduced where there was any disagreement - I seem to remember that Rugby School had a law stating that a boy sitting on a certain branch of a certain tree was "off his side". As the various codes developed and began developing 'game plans' and being coached, there developed a tendency to assume that if something wasn't specifically prohibited then it was a legitimate tactic. Players are also expected to push tje referee's interpretation to the limit, hence the other Shankly quote.

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 06:43 PM

I've just had a look on the GAA site, and although there is no mention of 'offside', the following foul play is defined for Gaelic Football (and Hurling)

"For an attacking player to enter opponents' small rectangle (goal area) before the ball enters it during play.
Exception
(i) If an attacking player legally enters the small rectangle, and the ball is played from that area but is returned before the attacking player has time to leave the area, provided he does not play the ball or interfere with the defence, a foul is not committed."

Subject: RE: BS: Soccer: let's abolish 'offside' rule?
From: MikeL2
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 09:35 AM

hi

Thanks Michael for reviving this thread.

I still disagree with you as I feel that the game would not benefit significantly to warrant taking out the off-side rule. I have no doubt if it did that the professional game would simply adopt itself to the changes and it would still be that the best teams would usually win.

One interesting point on the current female assistant discussions - I wonder what the outcome re- Gray and Keys would have been had the woman got that off-side decision wrong ???

Hmmmm

Cheers

MikeL2

MikeL2