Friday Freebie: Are law changes always for the better?

Blue cards, sin bins, where does it end?

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Every year IFAB, the law makers of our beautiful game, seem to have a competition to see who can disrupt the game further each summer they revisit and mess with some of the rules and laws of the game that don’t need changing.

Once upon a time it was VAR, before that the handball law and offside has also taken a battering, but what of their new idea for the coming season? Well, it’s not new as such, each of these new fangled ideas has a trial somewhere in a competition of continent to give themselves meaning and credibility.

The sin bin. For those of us at a lower level, namely Step 5 and 6 in the County League section it’s been in force for a few years to take down dissent within our game towards referee’s and their assistant’s.

There a player would receive a yellow card and spend 10 minutes off the pitch as instant punishment. Dissent however can make many forms from verbal use to slamming the ball down on the pitch after giving away a foul. However, that yellow card is not counted as part of the totting up process on the pitch.

A player could receive two more yellow cards and be sent off, a player could receive another yellow card for a foul but would register two yellow cards on the disciplinary dashboard.

Now please correct me if this is wrong, when it was first introduced this is how the system worked so a player could end up with five yellow cards and a one match ban but with more cards coming from sin bin offences than committing another offence to gain the cards.

IFAB though have decided to take the matter further and add in cynical fouls to dissent and changed the card colour to blue, rumours the FA Cup will be the competition in this country for its inception.

We’ve already seen that messing around with the rules and laws too much has led to many of us not knowing what is what any more and constant tinkering is giving match officials enough headaches from one season to the next.

Football is a simple game, that they seem hellbent on making as hard as ever to understand and in some cases enjoy. Some of the issues need stopping at the source.

Having been looking at some of the comments over the last 48 hours or so it’s clear that once again it’s not going to improve the game in great amounts.

Granted dissent is a point in the game we don’t need, but that starts at the top level. The constant surrounding of the referee filters down the level and it get’s worse the lower you go.

Players seeing this as acceptable take the message all the way, if it was nipped in the bud at that level similar to timewasting then it doesn’t become a problem. Adding the extra time on to games especially at the end of the second half is penalising supporters more than anyone else.

The reason for adding the time on? Fans not getting value for money for the ball being in play. Result? Give the game more time at the end when people in some cases need to get home, need to catch public transport instead of a long wait for the next train or bus.

Why can’t they bring in a time limit like the keepers had to release the ball, which incidentally doesn’t seem to be invoked as often as when it first was brought to the fore. Stop it at the source and then everyone understands and we don’t get silly added on time.

Can dissent surely not be punished off the pitch? What stops the game doing what the NFL does and punished players for late hit on fellow players after the game has finished? How we measure that I’m not sure, fines won’t a huge dent in a top player’s wage packet, further down it hits home but the elite level are the problem.

Adding cynical fouls to the equation seems a little like trying to get 2 for the price of 1, I haven’t yet found any explanation why they’ve felt necessary to add this to the list for a blue card. On that note do we look at the whole game and add a whole string of charges for the 10 minute time out?

I can see their point in what they’re attempting to do with dissent, but their inability to converse with those inside the game to gain insight and the lack of belief in VAR and other rule and law changes suggests they’re going to get this one wrong as well, or is it me that’s thinking wrong?

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What are your thoughts on blue cards, sin bins and rule/law changes? Let me know in the comments below.