Unwritten law

THE injury time goal whereby Ireland beat Albania 2-1 in Dublin has had repercussions, which will ring down the weeks; or even months.

GLANVILLE

THE injury time goal whereby Ireland beat Albania 2-1 in Dublin has had repercussions, which will ring down the weeks; or even months. Let me reconstruct it for you. Igli Tare, the big blond versatile striker/midfielder for Albania, outstanding throughout, hurt his ankle in a challenge and had to go off the field for treatment. Albania put the ball out of play so that this could happen. In the normal run of events, following current custom, the Irish would, from the consequent throw in, have returned the ball to the Albanians. That was what the visitors expected but it didn't happen.

Instead, the Irish exploited the throw in, and the Albanians' mistaken expectation that they'd get the ball back, to work the ball from left to right, till their right back, Stevie Carr, crossed to the big blond substitute striker Gary Doherty, who took possession of it on the left hand goal line. Doherty essayed a shot which, he'd admit himself, was not much more than a bow at a venture. But in the event, as the ball came across, an Albanian defender thumped it into his own goal.

Afterwards both Tare and his manager, Hans-Pieter Briegel, another blond giant who used to thunder up and down the left flank for Germany, bitterly protested over what had happened, clearly accusing the Irish of gamesmanship or worse. They admitted that the practice, only a few years old, of restoring the ball to the afflicted side when it has been put out of play was an unwritten law, but they expected it to be observed; they had expected better of the Irish.

Ireland's manager Brian Kerr seemed unapologetic. The evident feeling among the Irish was that they had put up with far too many histrionics by Albanian players during the game, when they had fallen flat, writhed around on the ground to get a free kick, then miraculously recovered to run around as if nothing had happened. The implication being that Albania had merely got what they deserved.

I'd disagree with that, if only because Tare, then with Brescia and in and out of the Italian side, now allegedly a target for Middlesbrough, is not the kind of player to feign injury. He is a powerful determined, resilient competitor and for my money when he complained his ankle had been kicked and injured he was no more than telling the truth. Let even if he wasn't, we all know that two blacks don't make a white and Ireland's behaviour, however "legal," was beyond the bounds of simple sportsmanship.

My mind went back a few years to what happened in an FA Cup tie between Arsenal and Sheffield United at Highbury. Late in the game the scores were level when a United player went down hurt and the ball was put out of play. From the Arsenal throw in, it went to their Nigerian striker Nwankwo Kanu while the Blades' players stood around expecting him to give them or their 'keeper the ball. But he didn't. In a somewhat abstracted manner, the lanky Kanu ran on down the field, eventually pushing the ball across the United goalmouth to set up an easy winner.

United's players and manager, then the current Birmingham City coach, Steve Bruce, were understandably incensed but their protests fell upon deaf ears. The referee gave the goal as in all logic he was obliged too, unless of course, he'd decided that Arsenal's behaviour constituted ungentlemanly conduct. So United lost, but there were major surprises in store.

First at the ensuing Press Conference, Arsene Wenger, the Gunners' French manager, generously proclaimed that he thought the match should be replayed. It seemed unlikely, but lo and behold in absolutely no time at all that was what the Football Association decreed. Jumping you might say on the moral bandwagon, David Davies, a senior FA executive, responded that indeed a replay should take place. It duly did and Arsenal won again.

However Corinthian Davies' response — and you may well know that the all amateur Corinthians, founded in the late 19th century, were always the acme of fine sportsmanship — was utterly wrong. No law existed to decree that Arsenal should have given the ball back to the Blades, however infrequently teams infringed the "unwritten law." Thus, in deciding what he did, Davies was in fact flouting the law and in the process undermining the authority of a referee who had unquestionably given the correct decision. Dura lex sed lex, the Romans used to say; a tough law, but the law.

All in all, this is a classical grey area. The current practice of giving the ball back to the opposition after such injuries shines forth like a good deed in a naughty world, but if it be, misquoting Hamlet, a custom more honoured in the observance than the breach, it remains no more than an optional custom.

What then should be done? Quite clearly the International Board, the law making body of football, on which sit equal representatives from the four British Associations and FIFA, should meet and ratify the present practice, setting it in stone. Indeed, it is amazing to me that they have not done so already. Not least when in recent years they have been only too ready to make major changes.

I still contend that there was no real need to forbid goalkeepers to handle when the ball was passed back to them by a defender, unless it were done with the head; an exception from the new rule which hardly makes much sense. In the event we have seen goalkeepers injured, sometimes badly, by attackers rushing in to challenge them foot to foot for the ball, and time and again 'keepers, slow in clearing with their feet or inept in doing so, give away humiliating goals, which would never have happened in the past.

More sensible seemed the decision to make a major change in the offside law. Whereas in the past, a player level with defenders when the ball was kicked was automatically offside, now he is onside. And of course we know all about the confusion of the offside law when it comes to whether or not an attacker in an offside position is interfering with the play. In the recent European Champions Cup, a referee gave Real Madrid a goal against Juventus in such circumstances in the Bernabeu, in the semi-finals, while another let Juve off the hook in Manchester in the Final against Milan. That anomaly needs clearing up, too.

Meanwhile, till the injured player-throw-in unwritten law is made a rule, we will go on occasionally getting incidents like that in Dublin.