Talk:Laws of the Game (association football)

message: I've created a new page (The Ball In and Out of Play), so that we come closer to completing the 'Current Laws of the Game' section of this page. Drumnbach 20:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: New Page Added

message: When this Wikipedia article was created - Mintguy put up 14 laws as the "original fourteen laws of the game" - these were transcribed from "The History of the Football Association"; Geoffrey Green;  Naldrett Press; (1953) - pages 36-38 Appendix 4. According to that book these 14 laws were those agreed by the Football Association in December 1863, AFTER the Cambridge Rules had been put on the table (call them post-Cambridge). They are a revision of the another set of 14 laws that were drafted on 24 November 1863, those DRAFT laws (call them pre-Cambridge) contain laws IX and X which allow hacking (kicking a player in the shins) and carrying the ball and are shown on pages 34-35 of that book. The post-Cambridge laws removed these priviledges and set the Association laws onto the path towards the game we know today, rather than towards a carrying Rugby style game. Aside from the two significant law changes, there are some other subtle differences in the wording of the other laws in the Geoffrey Green pre-Cambridge and post-Cambridge laws.
The problem is that other sources give 13 laws as the "original laws of the game". In some cases where 14 laws are mentioned (as in the FIFA centenial book) they are referring to the pre-Cambridge laws (perhaps by mistake).
The main question is - IF, as the recent Lord Bragg and FA/Bodleian Library publications seem to suggest, there were 13 laws in the first official publication of the LOTG, then where did Geoffrey Green's post-Cambridge 14 LOTG come from? 01:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The confusion - summary for newcommers 

message: Since this article is linked from the Wikipedia start page, I will shortly remove the spurious and somewhat confusing 14 laws per the discussion above. The FA was unfailingly less than helpful in assisting to get to the truth, and incidentally their website still says (at the time of writing) there were 14 laws penned in 1863, even after the publication of their own book on the topic based on the written minutes of the decisive meeting (the link can be found above).--luke 06:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article link 

message: How did the Football Association Laws of 1863 develop and evolve into the current Laws of the Game? Take for instance rule 3: After a goal is won, the losing side shall be entitled to kick off, and the two sides shall change goals after each goal is won. The second clause (the two sides shall change goals after each goal is won) is no longer practiced. Rule 5 ("the ball shall not be in play until it has touched the ground") has changed as well, since a header is allowed after a throw-in or a corner kick. When were these rules changed, and how have the Laws of the Game developed? Cows fly kites (Aecis) Rule/Contributions 14:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, this article seems to miss the important information (or a link to another article that explains it) of how the original laws evolved into the current laws. The 1863 laws clearly don't resemble football being played today, although I think current world cup strikers would applaud the lack of a cross bar in the original rules! Wjousts (talk) 13:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Football Association Laws of 1863 

message: The section titled "Recreational 'cheat sheet' for U6-U16" should be removed. Not only is no source cited, it is factually incorrect in many places: the "rules" listed do not remotely conform to U.S. Youth Soccer's rules (although no nationality is specified in the section), and there is variation between the U.S. States in some instances anyway, particularly from U-10 and below. If anything must be said at all, perhaps it should simply be recognized the Laws of the Game allow local associations to modify certain rules for youth players and "veteran" footballers, with some links to authoritative sites. TAGregory (talk) 04:37, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. These rules are not written in any official documentation I'm aware of, and they aren't in line with the rules for U6-U16 in the region where I referee. I understand that many national soccer associations and local clubs have radical differences in their youth soccer rules, compared to FIFA's Laws. Keeping this in mind, perhaps, as you said, it should simply be mentioned that: "the Laws of the Game allow local associations to modify certain rules for youth players and 'veteran' footballers." I agree 100%. --Jroy5 (talk) 00:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

text: Agreed  I can't see the relevance to The Laws of the Game.  I've tagged it (with rather too many tags) in case someone can see what to do with it.  If it is useful information (I can't tell), perhaps it could be moved to the relevant section in wikibooks:Football_(Soccer), and could add a link from the article?  --94.194.57.116 (talk) 13:12, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

text: Agreed. FIFA's laws of the game state that Subject to the agreement of the member association concerned and provided the principles of these Laws are maintained, the Laws may be modified in their application for matches for players of under 16
years of age, for women footballers, for veteran footballers (over 35 years of age) and for players with disabilities.. Because there can be a vast array of possible combinations in terms of these modifications, it makes no sense to have a single set of such modifications being listed. I'd support adding a section saying that some laws can be modified, but I wouldn't know quite how to write it. I've removed the cheat sheet from the article. --Dalimyr (talk) 15:47, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggest remove "Recreational Cheat Sheet" section 

message: I did this template Template:Association football laws--Feroang (talk) 06:37, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template 

message: "This is compared to other professional sports where the rule books number into the hundreds and thousands of pages." I'm not sure what other sports this is referring to. The rules may be simple but the official FIFA "Laws if the Game" PDF is currently 136 pages:
http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/federation/lotg_en_55753.pdf
FIBA Official Basketball rules are 81 pages long:
http://www.fiba.com/downloads/Rules/2010/OfficialBasketballRules2010.pdf
IRB Rugby Laws of the Game are 196 pages
http://www.irblaws.com/downloads/EN/IRB_Laws_2011_EN.pdf
IIHF Ice Hockey rules are 132 pages total (all sections together)
http://www.iihf.com/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/Sport/rulebook2010/Rulebook_102_127_-_29_September.pdf
These include indexes, covers, appendices etc to varying degrees, but overall it seems most sports rulebooks clock in around 100-200 pages. Not much to compare between them. Certainly none of the above relatively popular sports have rules in the "thousands of pages". Should it be removed?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.55.21.147 (talk) 22:18, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Two excellent points! I've amended the article to reflect these. As for the "shorter than other rulebooks" thing, I've heard that statement discussed, however it seems unverifiable and unnecessary for the article, so I've simply removed that sentence. LukeSurl t c 12:57, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: "This is compared to other professional sports..."

message: In reports I could read that players of India did not wear boots. They played in 1948 Olympic Tournament barefooted. In addition there is reported that the IFAB did decree to wear boots in 1947? or 1948? or 1949? or 1950?. Do you have further information, please? --Gödvolltreffer (talk) 14:32, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Gödvolltreffer. I've had a quick search, but I can't find the answer to your question. You might like to ask at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Entertainment - the folks there are experts at answering queries such as this. --LukeSurl t c 15:26, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Football boots 

message: Dear Sir, it was allowed to substitute players in the qualification for 1954 FIFA World Cup. An injured player was allowed to be substituted in the first half, an injured goalkeeper in the full time. Until 1958/59 it was allowed to substitute an injured goalkeeper. Before allowing substituting in general, England (F.A.) did it. In the most part there was the restriction regarding an injury. But no Referee could verify (excepting, he was a medical). - Is there anything to add regarding method of substituting, is there an article?   --213.225.38.186 (talk) 15:23, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the article is at Substitute (association football). Mattlore (talk) 22:34, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there an arcticle about substitutes or / and the method of substituting? 

message: I get that that's what the people who wrote them called them, but why did they phrase it that way? To an outsider it seems enormously arrogant, seeming to equate the rules of a simple game to actual legislation. --Khajidha (talk) 12:54, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Soccer was likely emulating cricket's Laws of Cricket, which appear to have been described as "Laws" since the 18th century. I don't know whether in that period the word "Laws" had the same officious character as it does today, or was just a neutral synonym for "rules". --LukeSurl t c 15:36, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why "laws"? 

message: I was just checking on the news about Theo Walcott, I was wondering if we should add the rules about concussion to the article as noted on  Govvy (talk) 19:36, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Rest periods after a game would not be part of the Laws of the Game, these only concern the on-field action. --LukeSurl t c 09:02, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concussion law 

message: I don't quite agree that the (London) FA Rules of 1863 were taken as the starting point for the Laws of the Game, because in fact they are not. Historically, the FA members were almost all from London and until c.1880 (a) had much less influence than the Sheffield FC and Sheffield FA Rules and (b) were a good deal less comparable to the Laws of the Game than the Sheffield rules (FC and FA). So the Sheffield rules would be preferable to the London rules. But even these are not the starting point for me.
And when it comes to the first codex, i.e. the combination of different local codes, then the Cambridge university rules are to be taken as the starting point, but not 1863.
Moreover, the article is about the Laws of the Game, and that is only the name of the all-British rules, i.e. those of the IFAB.
In short, either 1848 or 1886 can be taken as a starting point in my view, but not 1863. That would be disregarding the development of the rulebooks. (I refer here to the research of the historian Petra Tabarelli, who also works as an expert in this field for the IFAB) SallyMarchbanks (talk) 14:00, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Laws of the Game did not originate in 1863