Rampone's Handball

[canadiantarheel]

After reading Duane's article Breaking down "the call" I clicked on the link, http://www.ctvolympics.ca/videos/cha...-trafford.html, because I wanted to watch the handball the ref had missed by the American. It occurs @ 59:17 off a cross into the box. To my eyes it's just as ball to hand rather than hand to ball as the handball awarded after McLeod's "foul". In my opinion either both are handballs or neither are, but of course the call goes the Americans way and not ours.

[ddoouugg]

Not sure what replay you saw, but they played one from behind the net on ctv after the game and she turned left into the ball as she was facing forward so it was more ball to hand as she moved into the ball.

[empty_search]

Have to agree with ddoouugg on this one. My recollection of the replay is that, in order to make contact with the ball, Rapinoe leaned backward and dropped her arm so that the ball glanced off of her upper arm and out of harm's way. Don't really know what was going on in her head but the way that she moved both her upper body and arm suggests to me that it was deliberate.

On the penalty call, the ball was coming at Nault with pace, and she flinched in order to ensure that the ball would not hit her head. The flinch caused her to raise her shoulder, which thereby moved her upper arm - which the ball struck. Concluding that her action constituted a deliberate attempt to redirect the ball requires quite a stretch of the imagination.

The other hand ball call was equally mind boggling. In order to call Filigno's contact with the ball a hand ball meant that a) the ref did not see where the ball actually hit but felt compelled to guess or b) she wanted to ensure that the Canadian team was denied a scoring opportunity.

These calls, combined with the, for all intents and purposes, unprecedented indirect free kick call, and the "creative" corner kick calls, make Sinclair's comments logical, if not politically correct. Regardless of the consequences, comments of that nature were clearly called for. To say nothing for fear of FIFA retaliation would be to admit a second, psychological defeat in addition to the tainted defeat which they had just experienced on the field.