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Offsides

Edgy MD Mar 10 2017 04:19 AM

Why should anybody, in any sport—soccer, ice hockey, polo—care if a guy wants to goal hang? It seems to me to be a perfectly clean and viable stragegy, plus it has natural consequences. You hang out in the offensive side of the field, you give up defense, just like vice versa. So why should there be a rule? Is focusing so relentlessly on offense just too unseemly a purpose in gentlemanly sports?

RealityChuck Mar 10 2017 09:30 PM Re: Offsides

It's boring. And it takes away from the game -- on defense you keep blocking things and delaying and not allowing a decent shot until you get ahold of the ball/puck and send it to your guy by the goal. One-on-one usually is a tremendous advantage to the scorer.

Edgy MD Mar 10 2017 09:40 PM Re: Offsides

I tend to think it's boring having goals pulled off the board because a guy was a toe ahead of the defense. And defense strategy not being the deployment of special sports skillz but of pulling an offsides trap that makes puts a penalty on an honest guy trying to fulfill the purpose of the game. That's boring too. Long live goalhangers.

Frayed Knot Mar 10 2017 10:32 PM Re: Offsides

Edgy MD wrote: I tend to think it's boring having goals pulled off the board because a guy was a toe ahead of the defense. That's my biggest problem with how soccer is set-up (now that I've been watching the EPL occasionally over the last year or two). I mean at least in hockey it's not called offsides unless the whole body is; i.e.: if the left toe is onside then the play is legal. Soccer seems to be the other way around, that if the guy's shoelace is past the defender then the flag goes up. At the risk of sounding like the typical American complaining about lack of scoring in the 'beautiful game', merely adopting the ice hockey standard and only whistling the play dead when there's clear daylight between the attacker and the last defender would open the game up considerably and might even nudge the typical score from 2-1 to more like 3-2

MFS62 Mar 11 2017 03:21 AM Re: Offsides

Hmm, someone who only plays offense and can't or won't contribute to his team on defense. Seems to me that there are entire leagues that play baseball that way. What a shame. In basketball, it used to be called basket hanging. I'm not sure if its against the rules. There are so few players who play defense during a game or play that I'm not sure one would be missed. Later

d'Kong76 Mar 11 2017 04:02 AM Re: Offsides

I'm fine with it in hockey and soccer... I've never watched a polo match.

Frayed Knot Mar 11 2017 04:11 AM Re: Offsides

I'm not even arguing against the existence of the rule so much as saying that maybe a small liberalization of how they interpret it in soccer could make the game a bit more wide open. The way it is now, it's like they look for any excuse to flag the play dead instead of the other way around.

MFS62 Mar 11 2017 12:37 PM Re: Offsides

Frayed Knot wrote: The way it is now, it's like they look for any excuse to flag the play dead instead of the other way around. When I first watched my daughter play field hockey, I told her that there seemed to be only one rule in the sport - when it looks like a team will score, the ref blows a whistle and gives the ball to the other team. Some sports must be more fun to play than they are to watch. Later

John Cougar Lunchbucket Mar 12 2017 01:34 AM Re: Offsides

Islanders just had a goal disallowed on a tickytack offside