On 15 Mar 2004, at 11:26, Tom Styles wrote:
The concept of observers has always seemed like a reasonable one. Quite often a person off the pitch has a better view of a line call, infringement, or travel than the players involved.
Absolutely. Line calls especially.
However by handing over responsibility for any sort of calls to a third party you take something away from the players. That is the requirement to be honest and spirited and play with respect for the rules and other players.
Playing with observers does not mean that you hand over responsibility for calls to them. The players on the pitch make and settle all their calls as usual. Only if they cannot settle a dispute do they (theoretically) ask the observers to step in.
I say theoretically, because in the games I've seen where the teams asked for observers, they almost never called on the observers to settle a dispute (possibly because in the heat of the argument, neither party wanted to risk being proven wrong by an observer). The observers might just as well not have been there.
If you have teams or individuals that are predisposed towards making unreasonable calls or unreasonably disputing calls, they are going to be unreasonable whether there are observers present or not.
The only reason I'd like to ban observers is because they're always in the way when I'm taking pictures ;-)
Paul Hurt
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