What is the offside law?

 

The offside law was created with the formation of the Football Association (FA) and the publication of its laws in 1863. The rule prohibited any attacking player from being in front of the ball when it was kicked forward. The offside law was created because the sport then resembled forms of rugby, with similar tactics and players allowed to use their hands to control the ball in some circumstances. “Offside” means unfair. The attacking players are assumed to be gaining an undue advantage by being ahead of the ball when it is played forward. Offside is still intrinsic in modern rugby union and its retention as a principle in football was keenly advocated when the FA was drawing up its 1863 laws.

The idea was to stop  attacking players occupying positions close to the opponents’ goal and merely waiting for a ball to be played forward to score. The prevalent tactics of the English upper-class teams of the time were instead to assemble up to eight forwards attacking en masse, by dribbling the ball  simply to gain forward progress up the field.

Offside evolution

The offside law changed in 1866 with a player ruled as “onside” if there were three opponents between him and the goal, or if he was behind the ball when it was played. The plan was to try to resolve the tension between “fairness” and the need for more goals to be scored.

.In 1873 the rule was changed so that a player was offside when the ball was played forward, rather than when he received the ball. In 1903 came  a long-standing and often subjective definition of what constitutes a player being active during a period of play in which an offside occurs.

Then in 1925, only two defending players needed to be in advance of the forward for him to be onside. This latter change came about because teams had become so adept at catching opponents offside that games had too often descended into dull, scoreless stalemates.

In the 1990s changes were made with an attacker being level with a defender meaning they were onside. In 2005, it was ruled a player is only deemed offside if a part of their body with which they are legally able to play the ball is beyond the penultimate defender, allied to further definitions of what constitutes interfering with play.

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