March 2020 – Collaroy Cromer Strikers Fooball Academy

Would the presence of a timer for stoppages have a positive impact on football? – Part 3

28/03/2020/in Changes to the game /by Liam Bonney

FIFA as well as its associations have already tried to reduce the time lost to stoppages in play. For example the multi ball system is used in several UEFA competitions as well as the World cup and even our own Hyundai A-League. Traditionally football is only played with one ball, if it goes out the game does not restart until the ball is retrieved or returned. The multi ball systems purpose is to speed up the game by having ball boys stationed around the field with match balls in hand to quickly give to a player if the ball goes into the stands.

Whilst it works in theory, there have been some criticisms of the system. Ball boys tend to be from home teams and if the home team would benefit from the game being restarted as quick as possible the ball boys may appear to be more proactive in supplying the balls. On the other side of this some ball boys have also been accused of intentionally delaying the return of match balls to away teams in order to waste time and benefit the home team.

In fact, this came to a head in a game at Yeovil Town in the English 5^th tier or national league. One of the Yeovil Town ball boys refused to give the ball to a Bromely player and as a result the referee warned him if he did it again he would be dissmissed. When the boy did it again, he and the other 7 ball boys were all dismissed. The referee was then left to get the ball himself throughout the last few minutes of the game the Yeovil ended up winning 3 – 1. Like everything in football, clubs and teams will always look to gain a competitive advantage by twisting the rules whichever way they can.

Would the presence of a timer for stoppages have a positive impact on football? – Part 2

21/03/2020/in Changes to the game /by Liam Bonney

FIFA has guidelines as to how long each stoppage in play should occur for. Added time is currently calculated like this. If it takes 30 seconds for a goal kick to be taken but the keeper takes a minute only 30 of those seconds are considered unnatural and are added onto stoppage time. So, they allow a certain amount of time for each stoppage to occur and then anything over that allocated time is adjudged to be excessive and SHOULD be added on. As discussed previously this is often not the case.

Because of how football is played the ball goes out constantly and in addition to this players also foul each other constantly. Foul counts in games can reach a total of 30 between the two teams very easily. That’s every field player committing one foul and half of them committing two. Stoppages are going to happen. But the amount of time that they happen for is reduceable.

I think a timer for stoppages would work well in football, it would increase the amount of times the ball is in play. The more times the ball is in play the more likely there is going to be a goal or some type of action. Football like any sport must constantly evolve its rules in order to keep up with safety, but also to keep the sport interesting and relevant.

Without this the game is in danger of becoming stale and boring. A stoppage shot clock is a more subtle way of increasing entertainment value. Entertainment value being more action for the time and in some cases money you spend to watch something.

Would the presence of a timer for stoppages have a positive impact on football? – Part 1

14/03/2020/in Changes to the game /by Liam Bonney

Football is boring, at least it can be. Some people find it boring because there are not any big hits or massive points tallies, that’s never going to change. People get injured enough playing football without being more lenient on shoulder to shoulder challenges. That’s something that in my opinion we cannot change. What we can change is the amount of time wasted through stoppages. The stoppages in football are goal kicks, free kicks, corner kicks, penalties, substitutions, injuries and to a lesser extent throw ins.

I am just going to rule out a few things first, the timer would not be applicable for injuries. Player welfare should be one of, if not the top priority when considering any rule changes. All injuries require special care and attention. It would be very negligent to cap the amount of time an injured player received treatment for especially for a serious injury.

I am also not talking about a shot clock rule. A shot clock is something that happens in basketball where when the team in possession has the ball, they only have a certain amount of time to get a shot off otherwise it’s the other team’s ball. This would be very hard to police in football, not only that. But the field in football is approximately 8 times larger than a basketball court and would see teams simply retreat to their own box and form a low block in order to play out the clock. So, the shot clock would have to be 3 minutes to be adjusted. I think if this were to occur, we would see a lot of teams revert to just sending the ball long and playing in crosses constantly. This becomes boring and predictable. Especially towards the end of a three-minute spell. Teams would know that time was running out and would set up to defend either long balls, long shots or crosses into the box.

I am talking about a timer like we see in rugby league where kickers have a certain amount of time take a conversion, scrum or dropout. Teams have 30 seconds to take a dropout, 1 minute 30 seconds for conversions and 35 seconds to pack a scrum. This has seen an additional 3 minutes of actual playing time per game. But can it work for football?

The 6 second goalkeeper rule

07/03/2020/in Uncategorized /by Liam Bonney

Football has in game rules to help speed up the flow of the game. There is a rule although it is widely not enforced that goalkeepers are only allowed to have the ball in their hands for 6 seconds after catching or gathering the ball. This rule was brought in to stop goalkeepers at the end of the match simply holding onto the ball and winding down the clock when it was advantageous to do so for their teams. The punishment for goalkeepers who do hold onto the ball for an extended period is an indirect free kick from where they last held onto the ball. The most recent case of this I can remember is Simon Mignolet who was playing for Liverpool in a Europa League game against Bordeaux. He held the ball for 22 seconds before the referee ended up giving the indirect free kick, that was converted might I add.

Now I am not sure if the referee prompted Mignolet to hurry up or if he had simply blown the whistle after deciding himself that it was excessive. But the point remains in only very extreme circumstances is this enforced. I have played matches at community level where the referee’s first involvement of the game was to enforce this rule against my team, which the opposition also converted. Despite feeling completely dirty about the decision at the end of the day it is in the rule book and for the remainder of the match both goalkeepers speedily released the ball after gathering it.

So, what if what was enforced? Would it actually add to in game time? I believe it would. I recently watched a SPFL championship match between Ayr United and Dundee United. The goalkeepers particularly Dundee’s who’s side was in the lead for most of the game regularly and consistently took longer than 6 seconds to release the ball. With the total time after the 6 seconds adding up to 56 seconds. Now just for argument sake let’s say that’s 1 minute of time spent with the goalkeeper holding the ball for too long. Over the course of the round say 10 games that is 10 minutes of time taken up. Over the course of a 40-game season (rough average in Europe) that’s is 400 mins or 6 and a half hours of football lost to goalkeepers holding onto the ball for too long and that’s just in one league.

I know this is an extremely small sample size and its open to anomalies, but the point still remains.

I would honestly go one step further and reduce the time to release down to 5 seconds, it doesn’t take 5 seconds to catch the ball or gather the ball, get up and kick it or throw it to a teammate. There is more than likely going to be a player near the halfway line as a last resort if they cannot role it out short. In fact the longer goalkeepers hold onto the ball the more likely they are to go long anyway. Furthermore when goalkeepers have an option short they often release it quickly under the 5 seconds anyway so that the option is not closed down.

As a result i would like to see the 6 second rule changed to 5 seconds and actively enforced. IT would create a faster pace game with more action and potentially more goals as the ball would be in play for longer.