Statutory Decisions
Statutory decisions - are judgments based on the Laws of the Game - i.e. decisions that the Referee must make
as prescribed to him by the Laws.
Statutory examples are:
(i) A player who strikes another player must be sent-off.
(ii) A throw-in is the proper restart when the ball has traveled wholly over the touchline.
(iii) If the Referee has awarded a goal, he cannot disallow that goal if play has been restarted.
(iv) A goal cannot be scored direct from an indirect free kick.
(v) A player cannot be offside if he receives the ball direct from a goal kick.
Making statutory decisions depends greatly on the Referee's knowledge of the Laws and keeping abreast with
Law-change developments during his career. Statutory decisions are the easiest to make - because the Referee knows (or should know) beforehand, exactly which punishment or conclusion or outcome to apply. Referees should endeavor to refresh their memory of the Laws on a regular basis. It is very much like passing and studying for your vehicle driving test - when you first pass this test, the rules and situations concerning driving are easily
remembered, but as time wears on, facts that once seemed perfectly clear or situations that were reacted to automatically, suddenly become muddied in the memory. Creating an aide-memoir can help a Referee to
remember any particular problems that he has encountered in previous games.
Most of the Laws are easily remembered, and a Referee will cope with those automatically - but there are numerous other parts of the Laws that a Referee will never automatically remember when officiating at the beginning of his career. By simply listing down those vague Law areas on a piece of paper, and reading them before each game, the Referee will build up his knowledge of the Laws - which in time, he will be able to eliminate from his aide-memoir listing.
Having Refereed for some years, I still use my aide-memoir listing to remind me of any ultra-vague interpretations - and am still learning from each game. Refereeing is a life-long apprenticeship of constant learning, interpreting and application.
Some of my very first aide-memoir listings included:
"When a free kick is taken inside the penalty area by the defending team, the ball has to come outside of
the penalty area before it comes into play, and before another player can touch it."
I clearly remember in one of my first games, a goalkeeper taking a free kick inside his own penalty area very near the penalty mark, tapping the ball to a colleague who continued on with play. As a new Referee, I could not
instantly remember whether I should have allowed play to continue or not? If I had been allowed a few moments in the game to think about the correct decision, I would have stopped play, and asked the players to re-take the kick.
In my mind I knew the correct application of the Law, but I just needed a few moments to think about it.
The 'moral' of this is – is that a Referee does not get "a few moments to think about it" - he is expected to make an instant decision - and he can only do this by experience and by recognizing his weaknesses, and by constantly strengthening his understanding of the Laws.
Of course, I can now know make this correct decision automatically, without having to think about it - but this is just one example that I listed on my early aide-memoirs. It was not very long before I crossed this one out, and replaced it with many others.
Courtesy Julian Carosi
