Quote vbfg="vbfg"Indeed, but laws are inherently subject to interpretation. Whilst FA's waiting for the Clapham omnibus the rest of us can get on with knowing that. '"
Probably deliberately, you skate over the key point that if a law states something AMBIGUOUS, then it is open to interpretation, but if the statement is
unambiguous, then no interpretation is required nor indeed possible.
Quote vbfg="vbfg"An old, not used for many a moon interpretation was that if you were offside and strayed inside the ten but weren't physically involved in play then it didn't matter. The current one is that by being inside the ten you inherently influence the decision making of those physically involved in play and thus influence play itself. '"
Then why does the relevant law (and I should perhaps stress that this is the 2013 version of the laws, so has been revised, and any historical anomalies or previous "interpretations" we can take to have been updated too):
Quote vbfgand shall immediately retire ten
metres from any opponent who first secures possession
of the ball.'"
If you can be d, just tell me what you think the answer is to this:
IF NO opponent first secures possession (which is what happened here), then does the offside player still have to retire?
To ask it another way, HOW could the offside player EVER "immediately retire ten metres" if, as you I think argue, the penalty has automatically been given by virtue of being inside the ten? How? Maybe you could give me a simple example, and I ask not to be awkward, or clever, but because that's what the rule says, but the opposite (well, more than the oposite, since the Hudds. player never did catch the ball) happened here.
Quote vbfg="vbfg"To say one or the other of these is mere policy and must therefore be not under the laws is grasping for not very much. That it is policy doesn't stop it from falling under the laws. That's the most obvious point in the whole thread, surely?'"
OK, you insist that you want wordplay and definitions,well that's actually simple too. You can look at a law as what is to be achieved, and a policy as the detail of how it is to be achieved. Nobody is arguing that being policy makes something irrelevant to the laws. I only argue that the policy cannot CONTRADICT the relevant law. To REVERSE or IGNORE any given law, you have to change that law.
Or, to say the same in a lot less words:
Quote vbfg="Bulliac"Wasn't the word 'policy', used in the same kind of context where, these days, they usually say 'interpretation'? In which case, I believe FA has got it spot on. If it doesn't mean, " forget what it says in the laws of the game, this is what we want", what does it mean?'"
) when it involves you. Nobody else. You are big and handsome enough to handle it.
