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.

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.

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?

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.


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):

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.

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:

I'm done. I should have stuck to my guns. This is exactly the kind of nonsensical pedantry that stopped me from posting here in the first place. This isn't discussion or debate.

I didn't bother reading, fwiw.

I must confess to having a lot of sympathy with this view TBH.

However, I would appeal to vbfg not to "do one." More often than not we disagree but I do find your "alternative" view on things here very enlightening, and , FWIW, interesting. (A bit like pumpetypump if I am allowed to say so.)

However, we shall see.

FA, once again you seem to have won the argument, simply by boring/annoying people into submission. You are good, nop doubt about that. You even win an argument that you are completely wrong about.

- it just needs the realisation that it is necessary, the will to do it and about five minutes of someone's time. Let's not forget that most of these changes come about between seasons anyway.

Why though? You write a rule, someone will find a way round it. Governing bodies issue directives & guidance documents all the time. All teams will have been made aware of any clarifications of any rules - it is up to them to learn them & abide by them.

I'm not going anywhere, no more than I already had at any rate. I'm just done with this topic. But thank you for your words.

Nice straw man, but there wasn't an argument to win. It was supposed to be a rules specific discussion, but you try to turn everything into a personalities thing. Sad, but we're used to it now.

Anyway I don't think there's anything to usefully add, so it can be locked for mine.

No I don't.

Ya bore.

Really?

Well, here are your contributions to the discussion:



They have two things in common: none of them contribute anything whatsoever to the discussion, and all of them are personal jibes at me.

So, yes. You do.

Oh come come FA. I only get personal (these days

) when it involves you. Nobody else. You are big and handsome enough to handle it.

You knows I love ya really. I just get all uppity when other people are arguing with MY Aardvark.

That's true, but you do know that I only put you straight for your own good, don't you?



Gerraway, ya big soft southern jessie.

Are Eddie and FA the forums Ant and Dec?????

More like Compo and Norah Batty.

Waldorf and Statler more like

Good to see nothings changed main reason I don't bother posting much now.

Barry and Paul Chuckle???

Lets see how many double acts they get called

Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne

Is that Dumb and Dumber, if not .....

Dumb and Dumber

in fairness, FA does actually look like a chuckle brother.

Keith Harris and Orville ( don't know who's who though)

I don't have a problem with rules being updated TT, well not beyond a basic feeling that they are changed a tad too often . All I really ask, is that when they are updated, the updated version replaces the old one in the rulebook, either as a new rule or, at the very least, a note to the rule. As I said before, it's hardly the most onerous of tasks to to update an on-line file.

Well at least this thread has achieved something then, in dragging out such a rare nugget.

I can empathise as I went through a long period of depression, leading to withdrawal and a general dissatisfaction with life when all the, "I luv Wobbie", posts dried up, took me months to get over it....