Graham Kelly: New offside guidelines are not just a passing phase

Contrary to most observers, I believe Jeff Winter was absolutely correct to allow Danny Murphy's goal at Anfield against Leeds United last week. The Stockton-on-Tees referee overruled his assistant's upraised flag for offside against three Liverpool players as their team-mate's free-kick from wide on the left was fumbled into the net by the Leeds goalkeeper, Paul Robinson.

Why should a team be able to foul just outside the penalty area and then immediately negate the consequences of their actions by playing offside tactics?

The whole tenor of the application of the offside law in recent seasons, since the introduction of the concept of active play, has shifted on to attacking football and the bad old days of the flat back four (no names, no pack drill) advancing with arms aloft in appeal are supposed to have been consigned to history.

As Kenny Cunningham, the Birmingham City and Republic of Ireland central defender, testified on Sky the following morning, it was now too risky to adopt such a tactic. When he first came into the game, maybe, but his manager Steve Bruce would no longer encourage it.

In the past, when one noted manager said: "If you want entertainment you should go to the circus," a player could be adjudged offside merely by seeking to interfere with play or with an opponent, or seeking to gain an advantage.

Now, the law is simpler - in theory at least, though I retain some reservations. According to the latest international board interpretation, an attacker is penalised only if he is involved in active play by interfering with play, for example playing a ball passed or touched by a team-mate; by interfering with an opponent, i.e. preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball, for example by clearly obstructing the goalkeeper's line of vision or movements, i.e. making a gesture or movement while standing in the path of the ball to deceive or distract an opponent; gaining an advantage, i.e. playing a ball that rebounds off a post or the bar, the player having been in an offside position, or playing a ball that rebounds off an opponent.

As Winter explained later, he had a different angle from his assistant and felt there was no interference with the goalkeeper. While he defended his colleague, he thought it would have been contrary to the spirit of the game's current climate to chalk off the goal.

The interpretation recently circulated is not new law - it is solely a clarification - and it is revealing to learn that in discussing the topic at their meeting in September, the international board re-emphasised the tough requirement for assistant referees to await the outcome of an attacking move to see if a player in an offside position becomes involved in active play before they flag.

But it is all very well to blithely state that the interpretations have passed the test of Fifa youth tournaments, yet try telling that to the harassed official on the line attempting to remember who was where in a crowded penalty area 20 seconds ago with 67,000 Manchester United fans raising the roof and an apoplectic manager out of his box. Esoteric debates in referees' seminars are all very well - but life in the pressure cooker is very different.

The officials now talk about "phases of play", but I still contend that - with players moving in at speed in opposite directions - it is often impossible for the naked eye to judge with absolute certainty that an offside offence has been committed in the first phase of play, never mind subsequent passages.

Maybe it should be handed over to technology? At least in Scotland, match officials are in contact by radio. A split-second delay in the assistant's flag going up at Anfield could have avoided any potential embarrassment between the two officials.

One critic - who was famously told by Graham Taylor to "lighten up" at an England press conference - suggested that Winter only came out with his welcome public explanation because he had been released from the shackles imposed by the former Premier League referees' chief Philip Don, who had lost his job the previous day, reportedly for being too hot on the red and yellow cards.

I don't know about that, but Don overcame the initial reluctance of the Premier League chairmen to fund professional referees, and the ingrates who failed to recognise that he protected as well as appraised them may one day regret undermining him.

Don was not a wholehearted fan of Pierluigi Collina, who is acclaimed for his man-management (justifiably) and for not scattering cards about.

But why didn't Collina book Alpay for taunting David Beckham after his penalty miss in Istanbul? A caution for unsporting behaviour then may just have prevented all the unpleasantness later.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com