Barnet Have 92nd-Minute Winning Goal Disallowed After Smoke Bomb Obscures Linesman’s View (Video)

Chris Wright

17th, November 2013

6 Comments

By Chris Wright

Barnet drew 2-2 with Cambridge in the Conference yesterday but Edgar Davids’ side could and should have pinched all three points in the dying seconds when a looping ball bounced off George Sykes and over the line in the 92nd minute.

The only problem was, due to a smoke canister being set off in the stand behind the goal, the assistant was unable to track the ball properly as it ricocheted off a Cambridge defender on the goal-line and looped up into the air above the crossbar.

With thick smoke drifting out from the terraces over the pitch thus obscuring his view, the linesman deemed that the ball had gone out of play before it hit Sykes when the replays seemed to show that the ball remained in play all the while…

Pies’ sympathy is definitely with the lino on this one; we can only imagine that it’s quite tough to evaluate trajectories through dense white smoke and, as it was the Barnet fans that set off the grenade in the first place, bully to them!

Posted in FAIL, Football League, Funnies, Newsnow, Videos

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6 Comments

  1. John says:

    I was stood on line with the linesman I could see the ball perfectly , poor excuse for a terrible decision

  2. usrick says:

    Watching the video, it does not appear the smoke had reached the point where it should have kept the linesman from seeing the ball while it was anywhere near ground level. If the ball is in play when it disappears into the smoke on the way up and still in play when reappears from the smoke on the way back down, it seems extremely unlikely it could have been out at some point in between. Though in fairness to the linesman, it was a peculiar situation he had surely never confronted before. Kudos to Sykes for his measured and reasonable response.

  3. JJ says:

    Have to agree, top calm response straight after the game from the 19yr old George Sykes, who came throughthe Barnet FC Academy.Great Barnet n’ all! :)

  4. Nope says:

    The linesman gets no sympathy from me. Common sense and grade school physics would say that if the ball actually went out of play then it would have bounced behind the goal after coming back down on the crossbar instead of bouncing back towards the field.

  5. @John says:

    I think I see you in the video actually, are you the guy with the sun shining out of your arse?

  6. stephdeg says:

    Well you can see from the “cloud” that there was some wind blowing from the stand towards the pitch, so the doubt seems legit to me.

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