Laws Covering Gamesmanship
Law 5: The Authority of the Referee and his Powers and Duties, allows Referee discretion for any infringements of the Law. Gamesmanship is a subtle ploy only punishable by the authority of the Referee - and nobody else. Identifying what is gamesmanship, and what is not gamesmanship, and what is cheating - is a difficult skill to administer. Gamesmanship first reared its head in the sporting world of tennis, where it was quickly perceived that
a lesser skilled opponent was able to defeat a more skilled player by applying constant distraction, complaining about line calls, delaying serve, tying up their laces, inciting the crowd, making strange body movements and many other 'ungentlemanly' dupable acts intended to break the flow and concentration of the more skilful and focused opponent - without actually resorting to cheating or breaking the rules.
The USA World Cup is where the ‘seed of shirt pulling’ emanated from.
Law 12 lists the punishments for fouls and misconduct. The modern game has been infiltrated by several novel
ways to deceive the Referee. Shirt pulling incidents peaked during the 1998 World Cup in France to such a degree, that it now appears in all levels of the game. Players have become adept at pulling shirts on the 'blind side' of the Referee. These are subtle ploys committed in the hope of gaining an advantage without having to resort to a full-blown illegal method. Simulating fouls, commonly known as 'diving' (especially by an attacker in the penalty area) are so realistic, that swimming judges could not fail to award full marks: Feigning injury to waste time or to stop the flow of the opposing team: Substitutions, in the last seconds of a game: Inflammatory (and sometimes racist) remarks between players: Players constantly haranguing the Referee: These are just a few of our modern gamesmanship warts. How can the Referee decide what is unsporting behavior (gamesmanship), and what is not?
Law 13 - Free Kicks. The array of gamesmanship here is limitless: Delaying the taking of a free kick by many methods: Questioning the Referee thus delaying restarts even further: Questioning the position of the ball: Jostling for position in the 'wall': Subtly moving the ball to a more advantageous position: Asking for a substitution to be
made at a crucial stage of the game; and many more untold methods, some of which can be punished by the Referee by Law, and some which can't! For example: (the score is Red Team 1, Yellow team 0, last minute of the Cup Final) - just before the taking of a Yellow team free kick towards the Red team's goal, a Red team player prevents the quick taking of the free kick by walking slowly up towards the referee and says; "Ref., I'm injured,
can I be substituted please? "What can the Referee do? Is it gamesmanship that can be punished, or is it a
genuine request?
| Law 14 - The Penalty Kick. How many times have we seen the goalkeeper distract the penalty taker (and then go unpunished) by walking out of his goal to query the exact positioning of the ball on the penalty spot? Many times. This is an act of defiant gamesmanship that should always be punished with an instant yellow card for unsporting behavior. |
Instead of penalty takers 'getting on' with the task, they resort to distracting the goalkeeper by throwing a few words, by way of beguiling advice: By running up to the ball in strange ways: By delaying their run up, or by stopping half way and restarting: Are these legal moves? Or is it gamesmanship? Only the Referee can decide.
Recent Law changes (have in a strange way) encouraged the growth of gamesmanship. The mandatory Red card punishment for 'tackling from behind', brought in during the USA World Cup in 1994, resulted in players discovering other ways to 'cheat'. In the 'old days', the unpunished tackle from behind was used as a typical method of gamesmanship, whereby defenders unable to cope with a particular attacker's skill and speed, would very often 'clatter' the attacker from behind early in the game - thus giving that attacker a clear message about the outcome of future tackles and 'putting the fear of God' into the attacker for the rest of the game. Thankfully this type of tackle is now properly punished.
| The six-second possession rule for goalkeepers' holding the ball has resulted in many forms of semi-parrying the ball during a shot on goal, thus confusing the less wary Referees (did the goalkeeper have it under control or not)? When the 'back-pass' Law appeared in the 1998/199 season, it resulted in players attempting to circumvent the ruling - for example, by purposefully flicking the ball up onto their heads before heading it back to the goalkeeper. This is against the 'spirit' of the back-pass ruling, and is now punished the same as a normal 'back-pass would be (with the award of an indirect free kick.) |
The 1998/1999 Law change, stipulating that the waiting goalkeeper stands outside the penalty area on the goal line where it meets the penalty area, during the taking of kicks from the penalty mark, has lessened the gamesmanship antics used by goalkeepers in former times.
Gamesmanship is not easy to define. In some countries, such acts in sport are seen as a legal bending of the Laws, in other countries, similar acts of devious play, gesturing and comments on and off the fields of play are seen as bad behavior.
There are many sly techniques that can be used to counteract superior skill. Ideally, players' conduct on the field of play should adhere to the 'spirit of the game', but human nature being what it is, ensures that there will always be some form of gamesmanship - the Referees' task is to firstly identify possible gamesmanship, and then decide whether it is ‘legal’ Gamesmanship or whether it is Cheating?
Courtesy Julian Carosi
