It's very rare indeed that the assistant referee at the far end of the pitch from the action gets closely involved in play. But I've just found out that's exactly what happened in the Premier League game between Crystal Palace and Aston Villa last month, when Palace had a goal eventually disallowed for offside.
It was a very difficult decision to make. A shot cum cross from a Palace player from the edge of the area went into the goal, and at first referee Keith Stroud signalled a goal, seeing nothing wrong.
Stroud saw the ball go into the net, apparently directly, through a crowd of players. No problem there. The Assistant Referee spotted a Palace player in an offside position, but the ball went straight past him and into the goal, it appeared. The player had his back to the Assistant.
It was the linesman who was about 40 yards away on the halfway line who just happened to have a perfect view of the flight of the ball and spotted what happened.
The shot was going wide by a couple of yards but struck the Palace striker who was in an offside position on the chest, diverting the ball into the goal. Impossible for the referee and one assistant to see, but it was the third official who spotted it.
The crucial aid here for the refereeing team was their comms system, which enabled the referee to ask the assistants if there was any problem with the goal.
Stroud probably heard one assistant say that he didn't see any problem, but was then probably very surprised indeed to hear the assistant at the other end of the pitch pipe up and say, "Lads, I spotted it. It's offside. No goal!"
It won't have been an easy decision for Stroud to sell to the Palace players after initially allowing the goal, but what's important is that they got it right.
Even though the assistant had little credibility in terms of distance, he just happened to have the view of the incident that neither of his two colleagues had.
And if an official knows that a decision is incorrect in law, he must not allow play to restart.
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