The hockey puck glow was a bit weird, but actually pretty good for a few scenarios:

It is rather difficult for people who haven't seen much hockey to follow the puck. As you watch more of the sport, you figure out cues that help you track it, but I think that is a legitimate barrier that presents some difficulty in getting new fans of the sport. I think the blue glow helped a lot with that; would be nice if individual viewers could opt in our out of it on the fly. That would have been impossible (or prohibitively expensive) before, but with streaming video looking like the future rather than set channels it will be more workable.

When the puck travels close to the boards on the near side of the rink, it gets obscured and out of sight. The blue glow clipped right through that, so you could still figure out where the puck was. If two or more players were in a scrum for a puck stuck along the boards, you could see if it was moving and therefore know if a ref/linesman was going to whistle the play dead. That was quite a handy feature also.

Overall, the implementation / resolution of the puck highlighting in hockey was a bit non ideal, but it did have some real upsides. I don't think it deserved *quite* as much flak as it got...

The thing about Arsenal is, they always try and walk it in. Looks bloody nice when it comes off

I thought it was offside when it happened. It always looks strange when a player is in so much space and 95% of the time it's because they're offside.

In football (unlike, I believe, other sports with offside rules) it's the exact moment your team mate passes the ball that matters, which is why the director pauses it then.

Fun fact - this means that the assistant referee (the linesman, at the side with a flag) has to simultaneously look at what players are in offside positions and look at the ball to see when it's passed. If the ball is travelling quite far up the pitch, it's physically impossible for the assistant referee to do this.

Additional fun fact - players and fans are extremely forgiving of this and should this impossible situation result in an error that's to the detriment of their team, they will typically smile wryly and think back to a time when they've been the beneficiary.

The previous paragraph may not be entirely accurate.

There is a video that shows right before the second half starts, that the linesman controls the net (if the connection to the posts is as it should be), but misses the broken net (not the hole, since a net is just a collection of holes ) - Sadly I cannot find it on youtube, i saw it on TV after watching the game.

Hey hey hey..........Thanking you dude
In reply to this comment by legacy0100:
*promote

My B's stole your drinking vessel :-P.

>> ^messenger:

Bien sûr.>> ^bmacs27:
Canadian I presume? >> ^messenger:
That's a linesman, not a ref. He doesn't have an orange armband.

Bien sûr.>> ^bmacs27:

Canadian I presume? >> ^messenger:
That's a linesman, not a ref. He doesn't have an orange armband.

Canadian I presume? >> ^messenger:

That's a linesman, not a ref. He doesn't have an orange armband.

>> ^nanrod:

Amazing! 61 upvotes appear out of nowhere, for no reason.
Now for some facts. The man is a linesman not a referee. He is coming to the scene from the blueline on the left of the video which puts him directly in line with Toews (the guy in Red). He is not the referee at the beginning of the vid or the other linesman to the right at the beginning and you can see his helmet approaching from behind Toews at :06. You have to remember how fast hockey is. It takes a linesman less than 2 seconds to skate from his position at the blueline to the net which can seem like he appears out of nowhere. If you video a whole game from this position you could probably edit out 5 or 6 similar scenes.


Was going to point out what @nanrod said. I think he was off camera and was hid discretely by camera movement.

Amazing! 61 upvotes appear out of nowhere, for no reason.

Now for some facts. The man is a linesman not a referee. He is coming to the scene from the blueline on the left of the video which puts him directly in line with Toews (the guy in Red). He is not the referee at the beginning of the vid or the other linesman to the right at the beginning and you can see his helmet approaching from behind Toews at :06. You have to remember how fast hockey is. It takes a linesman less than 2 seconds to skate from his position at the blueline to the net which can seem like he appears out of nowhere. If you video a whole game from this position you could probably edit out 5 or 6 similar scenes.

That's a linesman, not a ref. He doesn't have an orange armband.

>> ^demon_ix:

Now, explain the Offside rule


When the attacking player is more advanced than 2 defending players, in the defending team's half and ahead of the ball when the ball is passed, said player is deemed to be offside if they interfere with play. Interfering with play is defined as any of: touching the ball; blocking the movement or sight of a defending player; playing against the referee's favourite team; playing when the linesman blinks/feels like stretching his arm/gets bored; shagging your team-mate's ex.

Unfortunately that'll never happen EndAll. What I don't understand is how on earth the linesman didn't see it. He had a perfect view!

Great defensive work!

Football works like this, what the ref thinks happened is considered to have happened. If the ref doesn't think the ball cross the line, it's not a goal (when a 3rd party interferes, it's a drop ball). In this case, the defending team shouldn't contest the drop ball and whoever was about to score should tap it in, but that rarely happens.

It has happened on occasion, last season in a minor English game a player had heart failure at half-time and the match was called off with his team (Leicester I think) losing 1-0 to Forest. When they replayed the whole match a few weeks later, his team stood still while the opposition goalkeeper walked the ball into their net to restore the score. Great sportsmanship, but it also shows how the ref has his hands tied in such matters. He can't demand this, he can't just say it's a goal, but if the two teams sort something out on the pitch, he won't stop them (unless it's some sort of match fixing, but I don't think this counted!)

There was an opposite incident last week, Reading "scored" against Watford according to the ref, however no one except the officials saw it. What happened is that the ball was in the box, near the goal (about where the inner, 6-yard box meets the goal line, if you know your stuff) on the assistant referee's side (assistant referee = linesman). For some reason this linesman thought it had crossed the goal line (it hadn't) between the posts (not even that close) and the ref, who's view may have been blocked, took his advice and awarded the goal. It was a hideous decision but it stands. In fact it went down as an Own Goal for some poor Watford defender who happened to have touched it last.

At a guess half the fans were confused until about 4 hours after the match when the news reports came through. The players must have been confused too, certainly no Reading player celebrated until after the ref had talked to his linesman and I'm sure all 11 of them would immediately admit it wasn't fair. They offered to replay the match but the FA said no, ref's decision is final. The ref got into a bit of trouble I believe, although the linesman who screwed up was running a Premiership line the next week so he's OK. The buck stops at the ref.

The 89th minute goal allowed Santacruzense to snatch a 1-1 draw at home to Atletico Sorocaba in the Paulista Football Federation (FPF) Cup on Sunday, a regional tournament played in the state of Sao Paulo.

Pictures showed that after a Santacruzense player shot narrowly wide, the boy collected the ball with his feet and took it back on to the pitch.

However, instead of returning it to the goalkeeper, he subtly tapped it across the line into the net.

Although there was nearly 10 seconds between the shot going out and the boy placing the ball over the line, referee Silvia Regina de Oliveira awarded a goal amid furious Sorocaba protests.

Oliveira, who has refereed in the Brazilian first division and the Copa Sudamericana, said she based her decision on the linesman.

"I should have trusted my own vision," Oliveira said in a radio interview.