The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) is set to speak to the game’s lawmakers in a bid to learn lessons from the incident which left Nottingham Forest striker Taiwo Awoniyi seriously injured.
The Nigerian was placed in an induced coma to aid his recovery from urgent abdominal surgery after he collided with a post in his side’s draw with Leicester on Sunday.
The injury occurred after assistant referee Sian Massey-Ellis delayed raising an offside flag against Awoniyi’s team-mate Anthony Elanga.
The Premier League website states that in line with VAR protocols which apply worldwide, assistants should keep the flag down where there is a “clear opportunity to score or very obvious attacking phase and tight judgement for onside/offside”.
Now, Awoniyi’s union, the PFA, could seek observations from the body which governs football’s laws, Ifab, as well as the English game’s referees’ body PGMOL to discuss whether the current rules on delaying flags create issues for players, as per the PA news agency.
The union’s priority is understood to be Awoniyi’s health and recovery at this stage, but when the time is right it intends to speak to all the stakeholders involved in the incident, including the club and the player. The PFA will ask for observations and look at whether any lessons need to be learned.
It is also likely, in light of the incident, that Ifab will give consideration to whether there is a need to review the VAR protocol and guidelines.
The existing protocol is the result of extensive input from the football world. Prior to VAR’s introduction there was much frustration with players being flagged for offside when they were through on goal, and replays later showed they were not actually offside.
Allowing play to continue clearly creates the potential for an injury to the attacker or the goalkeeper, and the protocol tries to strike a balance by stating that if a player is clearly offside then the flag should still go up, but where it is not clear, for fairness, the play continues.
