That goal....

I was down on Tonbridge Park the other day just on a walk and happened to stumble upon a lively looking football match. Only a Sunday afternoon match between a couple of rival pub teams but, nevertheless, a fiercely fought tight dual. The team in white shirts had taken an early two goal lead, but the reds had come back valiantly to 2-1. Then the incident happened: the reds shot from the 18 yard box, a superb strike, and whacked the cross bar. As the ball spun off the cross bar it appeared to go well inside the goal behind the goalie, but then a strange thing happened. The ball then, still in a spin, came back out of the goal and into the goal keeper's hands. All the red team (and most of the whites, but they were staying quiet) knew it was a clear goal as did the small crowd on the touchline nearest the goal. But the referee was having none of it and the linesman had got a fly in his eye just as the ball was banging against the bar. Luckily one really keen spectator had videoed the whole incident so that he could show it to his drinking buddies later on as it was the captain's birthday. (The captain was a bit of a quiet bloke but a brilliant footballer which made up for it.) The crowd were so incensed by the injustice of the ref's decision that they shouted for the amateur film maker to replay the incident. So they all gathered around and waited for him to get to the right bit of the tape and watched as the evidence became all too clear that they'd been robbed of a goal. The ref was a sensible man and knew that he had two choices: stick to his decison based on what he thought he'd seen (and according to the rules of the game) of be pragmatic and thereby avoid a riot. As he watched the, by now, red faced fans beginning to match the colour of their red shirted team he knew that there was only one course of action. After all he could see the evidence right there in front of his very eyes. Because the camera man had a swanky new dvd digital cam corder he was able to freeze the image at exactly the point at which the ball had, so plainly, crossed the line so there really was no problem in him bending the rules to avoid a major crowd control problem. Now if only they'd had that kind of technology available to them for the England Germany game....