Hudds had spent the entire game messing round at the play the ball, so with a few minutes left and down to 12 men, when Bentham saw the ball come out it was probably fair to assume that a Hudds player had his hands on it.

Maybe a mistake, but in the context of Huddersfields tactics upto that point they can hardly complain.

Correct. Bentham was the only person who was ideally placed to see where it went.

All this debate about camera angles and trajectories is irrelevant if Bentham was stood directly underneath it and saw it pass outside the post.

Assume ? Is that how they're refereeing games now ? Thought they could only give what they SEE.

Even Bentham can only say what impression he had in the fleeting instant it was happening, that is all he has to go on. Sadly the evidence at least extremely strongly suggests, if I can put it at its mildest, that he was wrong.

Your statement is based on the quaint idea that Bentham is incapable of making a mistake. I am sure he himself would not claim that. Your statement presupposes that in 80 minutes, and a few thousand incidents, every single thing the ref decides is factually correct. With respect, do you need me to explain to you why that is a silly view?

All we know is Bentham THOUGHT it had missed, and sadly we don't have any way of replaying what he saw. But of course he DID have the option of using the video replay system and I must say I don't understand why on such a hotly disputed call he chose not to use it, what would have been the detriment?

I'm still uncertain.

The first set of pictures from FA does show it drifting to the left slightly and is not conclusive. On the other hand, the striking of that sign seems to make it nailed on.

On the other hand, the one sent in by Fully, with the posts drawn straight up, does seem to suggest that it drifted towards the posts.

I'm still no more certain, other than Bentham was in a very good position to judge, looking up.

Ball comes out in a tackle. The ref hasn't seen a knock on or it stolen, what does the ref do?
He has to take a guess at what happened. If he saw a defenders hands around the ball and an arm suddenly move back in a quick motion then he'd probably give a penalty. If he didn't see that he'll probably give a knock on. But it's still a guess, and it's ALWAYS going to happen. RL is unlike football or union where the ref can just wave play on if he hasn't seen anything. We have regular situations where a decision HAS to be made one way or another regardless of how good a view the ref had.

But it is. You can clearly see this, as the far posts in the image are bang in the middle of the near posts. the camera is set up precisely level with the centre spot.


No, you wouldn't. Unless the cameraman is completely in line with the ball's path. From the image I posted showing the ball as it approached the camera, you can see that he was almost exactly in line, but not quit, because it endes up a (short) distance to his right.

This means that the closer the ball gets to him, it will have an apparent motion from left to right (from his point of view) which will at first be almost unnoticeable until, if it gets level with him, it is exactly 90 degrees to his right. As I said before, if you drew a path of the ball as seen by the cameraman, it would for that reason be a narrow parabolic path. It would not be a straight up and down vertical path.


It's not your forte, but you're over-complicating it. What happens is that the ball goes up but at an ever decreasing rate, until eventually gravity wins and the ball starts to fall back to ground at an ever decreasing rate. Viewed from above, the ball would set off fast, and then decelerate at an even rate as it lost forward speed due to air resistance.

Viewed from the side, the combination of these effects is broadly like the image below. That is for a golf ball, and is not the same as for a rugby ball, because a golf ball generates lift and so continues to rise for longer, but in general terms it is the same sort of path. Similar is true for a bullet, a cricket ball or any unpowered ballistic object.




But it is harder to disprove the laws of physics, and if we know where the ball started off, and where it ended up, we can draw virtual lines, can't we. The question is not whether we can prove at what point in any image the ball passed the goal line, indeed that would still not tell us much if anything. The question is whether we can work out whether the ball's trajectory was inside or outside the posts. We can, and I did.

It would have been interesting to see it from sky's "ref cam", although as that points with the head and not quite the eyes it may still have missed given the height.

Obviously I'm biased, but I do wonder whether Bentham was just very, very certain that it was wide, which was why he didn't ask for the VR.

A head cam shot may indeed have been brilliant, for once.

Of course, so i'd be interested what you make of the evidence I have posted, in particular the clearest evidence of where the ball hit the "back wall".

And what if he doesn't see anything, except the ball coming out?

Unless you want every single decision in the game referred to the video referee, then the on field referee is going to have to use his skill, knowledge and judgement to make the 50:50 calls. When the ball comes out in the tackle the ref has to make a call - he cant just ignore it.

all that proves is where the ball hit the wall, it doesn't prove anything about the route it took to get there.

It hit herehttps://img.photobucket.com/albums/v154/boiledvark/circled_ball_zps4c3decd2.jpg" >

What other route could it reasonably have taken?

From page 22 -

The first picture with the multiple balls and the green line lends itself to the possibility of it going wide, as the ball is getting closer and closer to your green line.

The "back wall" pictures are a more stimulating as the "Fantastic" sign is well between the sticks. I'd like to have a look from the camera at the rear of Brough in order to draw a line along the ground between him and the fantastic sign. Apologies if you've posted that on a different page.

He wasn't stood far too the side of the posts, and the sign is between the posts (although quite far back).

I think its more likely he just got caught up in the moment and forgot. How often is the ref asked to make that kind of decision, and how often does he refer it to the VR? I think he just got caught up in his usual process, looked at it, thought it went wide, blew for it. Never crossed his mind to go to the VR.

This is a big mistake for a ref btw, it’s a failure of process not judgement. Any ref, even the bestest in the world ever can make a mistake of judgement, none at his level should make a mistake of process.

That "Fantastic" shot may be misleading. The ball when it is close to the camera suggests that it is travelling at some lick, and I just can't see how it could have dipped to the "Fantastic" sign but be in the shot as it was so close to the camera. That suggests that it hits something higher and bounced down. In fact, the shot of the ball close to the camera may be it on the way down rather than going up.