Rant on House Rules

As you know, many leagues have house rules that sometimes interfere with the natual flow of soccer. The one house rule that always seems to generate passionate discussions is the one of no sliding tackles. If you read one of the other (better) blogs that refer to the subject, you will notice that they all, for the most part, make a distinction between a slide and a slide tackle.

This weekend, my son's team played another team in an indoor league where there was a house rule of no slide tackles. The match was at 3-3 when one of the players on my son's team dribbled past the goalie and had a step on the goalie and the defender and he slid to nudge the ball in. The ref called the goal off stating that there were no slide tackles, but in this case, there was no tackle in the slide, nor was anyone affected. He did it again later in the match again, where he waived another goal for the same reason. My son's team lost 4-3 but there was much discussion over the ref's rulings. Since everyone knows that I am a ref too, I get asked, "What would you have called?" and it is hard to defend the ref in cases like this. In both occasions, the player doing the sliding was not slide tackling, but rather sliding to play the ball. It is a hard one to enforce consistantly, because there are no slide tackles but in my book, at least, there can be slides, even when defenders are present and within playing distance (though I might feel inclined to call it if the defender were to flinch). Still, the plays in question here would not have been called for sliding as there was space and direction that favored the attacker.

I rant on this because this is one of my worries, these house rules that make it complicated to be fair sometimes. In the case of my son's team, the ref had direct result in the match, and as a fellow ref, that is something that you do not want to be associated with, the fact that your calls determined the outcome of a match (well they always do, but I think you understand what I mean). Ok, enough for tonight. Enjoy the week ahead.