I actually suspect they didn’t know. When a sport is played one way for 200 years, you don’t read the rule book to check, you just copy what everyone is doing!
replyEven the commentators knew. They called it out as it happened. It was absolutely common knowledge.
replyOn the local elementary school field, sure.
replyAt the highest levels of the sport, they know the rulebook like the back of their hand.
I disagree: players rarely know the rules in-depth. A great example is a YouTube video I watched where a Premier League and World Cup referee told the camera that most players didn’t know where they needed to be placed for kick off and that they needed to kick the ball forward. It was so bad that IFAB changed the rules to allow kick off to backpass because it was causing so much conflict at the start of football matches!
reply