Sunday, October 18, 2009

Rafael Benitez - Ain't Life a Beach



The freak 'Beach Ball' goal for Sunderland against Liverpool in yesterdays Premier League (nice you tube vid above :) was remarkably well acknowledged by 'Serial Whinger' Mr Benitez. I couldn't believe that he didn't ask for a rematch, or even the shooting at dawn of referee Mike Jones ...... and for once in his life I think he'd have good reason to complain.
By the rules of the game the 'goal' should never have stood, mention for such occurrences can be seen within the Fifa Laws of the Game document

Extra balls on the field of play
If an extra ball enters the field of play during the match, the referee must stopthe match only if it interferes with play. Play must be restarted by a droppedball in the position where the match ball was at the time when the matchwas stopped, unless play was stopped inside the goal area, in which case thereferee drops the ball on the goal area line parallel to the goal line at the pointnearest to where the ball was located when play was stopped.


Also covered here

POWERS AND DUTIES

The Referee:- stops, suspends or terminates the match because of outside interference of any kind


Steve Bruce argued that the referee would probably not have known what ruling applied in such a freak occurrence !!
A referee freshly qualified, refereeing an U-10's match maybe - but this is a man who is (almost) at the very top of his profession. Alex Ferguson had to retract a statement last week after he said Alan Wiley wasn't 'fit' to be a referee,following Man Uniteds game against Sunderland, if he'd said it about Mike Jones he wouldn't have been retracting his statement this week.

Being an ex-referee myself, I always try to see decisions from their point of view and realise what a difficult job they have in games that are covered by cameras from every angle.But in this instance I can't find any excuse for Mr Jones, he obviously saw the incident - but didn't do his job correctly.

Guess you could say it was a case of 'Taking his eye of the Ball'

1 comment:

Nick said...

Yeah, I agree - terrible refereeing. I'd agree more if I hadn't backed Sunderland on saturday.

;o)