Football Food For Thought / Dan Fitch / 20 October 2009 /

Everyone is talking beach balls at the moment, but Dan 'The Betting Man' Fitch has sympathy for the referee. After all, how can we judge a man for not knowing a rule that none of us knew either?

It's not very often that I do this, but I'm actually going to defend a referee. Well, sort of.

Mike Jones has received plenty of stick for his gaffe on Saturday, when he incorrectly allowed Sunderland's beach ball-deflected goal to stand against Liverpool.

Now I understand that it is the referee's responsibility to occasionally thumb through the rules of football. This is especially true when the referee in question is a professional.

However, I can't help but feel a little bit sorry for Jones. Though both he and the other officials should have known about the rule, surely we can't be that hard on him considering that the vast majority of people were also completely clueless about the law.

I don't just mean idiots like myself either. I was watching Soccer Saturday when I heard about the incident and former players like Le Tissier, Thompson and Merson were all in the dark and unaware that the goal should have been disallowed.

None of the Liverpool players made a fuss and we can all guess how much Benitez would have moaned had he known of the rule. The fans were quiet too, despite the fact that the last time something perfectly spherical and sporting a Liverpool club badge deflected the ball like that, was back when Jan Molby scored an own goal.

Sunderland's manager Steve Bruce was pleasantly surprised to be told in the press conference that they goal shouldn't have stood. Thank god someone let him know before he'd had the chance to name the beach ball as man of the match.

The fact that no one seemed to know as to whether the goal was legit, only goes to demonstrate how rare an occurrence this was. Which is a surprise when you consider that balloons and the like are always making their way onto the pitch, yet the players never seem to summon the energy to boot them off.

Freak occurrence or not, it was costly for Liverpool, who have now lost four times in the league this season and have been defeated in three successive games in all competitions. Liverpool are now [14.5] to win the league and you can lay them at [1.9] in the top four finish market.

This furore made me start to wonder what other obscure rules are out there and ready to pounce upon the unsuspecting public. A leaf through the rule-book (well, actually more of a flick through a FIFA PDF file) reminded me of an incident a couple of seasons ago that could have possibly have been avoided.

You may remember when the Aston Villa keeper Peter Enckleman struggled to control a ball that had been thrown back to him by a team-mate, that then squirmed into the goal.

This was a legitimate goal because it was deemed that Enckelman touched the ball before it went into the net and it was therefore an own goal. However, if a team take either a throw in or a free kick and the ball accidentally finds it's way into their own net without being touched by anyone en-route, would that be a goal?

No, it would not. Surprisingly enough, the referee is duty bound to give a corner in such an instance. Who knew?

Yes, it turns out that the football rulebook is filled with rules that no one knew about, much like the fact that in the real world, pregnant women are legally entitled to relieve themselves in the street.

Let's hope that this mistake doesn't result in the eventual sacking of Rafa Benitez. Imagine getting the push and not being to go on holiday afterwards, for fear of seeing a beach ball...

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