RateTheRef

Quote from: ARF on Mon 03 Oct 2022 14:46

Quote from: RefMatt on Mon 03 Oct 2022 13:32

https://twitter.com/stevenccrosby/status/1576653845048197120?s=46&t=aALQeNyHzWWNxJM9_Uencg

This tweet shows a more blatant attempt to delay a restart but did not receive a card. This is mandatory, and is also the new guidance is it not to crack down on time wasting this year? Attwell set himself up for failure from this moment onwards.

Yes, there will be occasions where a caution for delaying the restart is unavoidable - for example, the attacking team looking to take a quick free kick and a defender deliberately kicks the ball away to prevent them from doing so. That isn't the case here. The ball has rebounded to the player who has committed the foul, and he has kicked the ball away in annoyance at committing the foul/being penalised for the tackle he made. No Leeds player is rushing to get the ball to take a quick free kick. A caution isn't needed here.

The second caution for Sinisterra is a very clear case of a player deliberately committing an offence in order to prevent the opposition from playing - in this case, by failing to respect the required distance and intentionally blocking the free kick. A caution is absolutely needed here.

IMO it's comparing apples and oranges.

What happened to kicking a ball away = yellow. I remember when Robin Van Persie was shown a second yellow for doing that in the UCL Quater final.

There's never been an offence specifically for kicking the ball away, that's just laziness on the media's part as they can't be bothered to quote the correct law.  When a player kicks the ball away after the whistle has been blown it can fall into one of two categories, dissent by action or delaying the restart of play.  It certainly didn't appear to be dissent, he was more annoyed at himself than he was Attwell for giving the free kick, that wasn't the body language of a player dissenting.  So that leaves delaying the restart of play, and I don't believe it did.  No team is likely to be rushing to take a free kick that early in the game, and with multi-ball it really didn't delay anything.

And the comparison with Sinisterra is somewhat ridiculous, as he wasn't sent off for either dissent or delaying the restart, rather the offence he committed here was failing to respect the required distance.  He didn't delay the restart of play as play was restarted, it just had to be restarted again because he wasn't the correct distance away, not in itself always a problem, but it is when you stupidly stick your leg out like that.