ANYONE who watched the choreographed moves of the Bolton Wanderers players in the 1-1 draw with Leicester City on Tuesday night will have been as confused as the Leicester defenders about the offside law. It all used to be so simple: any player between his last outfield opponent and the goalkeeper was offside. No more.

Bolton, having scrutinised the new interpretation of Law 11, especially with regard to “active” and “passive” offside, positioned two players in offside positions at free kicks. The players rushed back as the kick was taken, creating confusion in the Leicester defence. From one such kick, Kevin Nolan, one of the “offside” players, struck a post and Bolton equalised from another.

Ian Walker refused to blame the presence of Nolan in his line of sight for his failure to gather Kevin Davies’s flick before helping the ball into his own goal, but the goalkeeper acknowledged that he had been aware of the Bolton player’s presence. By the end, Leicester were even trying the tactic themselves.

As a result, representatives of the FA, the FA Premier League and the Football League are to meet today in an attempt to bring order to the chaos surrounding the recent attempts to “clarify” the offside law. Now they may end up having to clarify the clarification. In particular, they hope to find a way to prevent the tactics adopted by Bolton on Tuesday becoming widespread.

“We had a look at the new regulations and we’ve got to use them to our benefit,” Sam Allardyce, the Bolton manager, said. “I don’t like them. I think they detract from the game. Fifa have got it horribly wrong, but we’ve got to use it to our advantage, the way we used it to upset Leicester. We are probably one of the first to start implementing it and one or two more are going to have a look at it, but we could end up with a situation where 22 players are in the box for a free kick and that is not in the spirit of the game whatsoever. I don’t like it, referees don’t like it and the FA should look at it and put our case forward and show common sense.”

Instead, today’s meeting may attempt to categorise the tactic as “unsporting behaviour” — that useful catch-all. Should that fail, John Baker, the FA’s head of refereeing, has called, perhaps optimistically, for clubs to follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Baker is one of the members of the International FA Board (IFAB) — the body responsible for the laws of the game — that produced the reinterpretation.

“This was intended to be a positive measure and it was hoped it would be taken up positively, but that obviously is not the case,” he said. “We didn’t anticipate this reaction from managers and players. In the tactics at the Walkers Stadium, we have an example of players not being offside as the rule is working at the moment. But with the positions the two players took and the crowd’s reaction to them, there is a case for saying that the keeper was distracted. If teams are acting outside of the spirit of the game, it shows something cannot be right. There is an international board meeting on February 28. Any association can bring up a concern. If the controversy continues, we will be doing so.”

The new directive places more strain on referees’ assistants. On Tuesday, one assistant had to remember which two players had been offside but inactive, then keep track of them as they ran back into the pack of defenders and attackers. That was tricky enough, but if teams put three, four or more players in the “offside” position for free kicks, what is the assistant to do? Refuse to allow the free kick to be taken until he has made a note of the players involved, in case one of them becomes active — or stock up on headache pills?

Bolton were not the first club to benefit from the new interpretations, although they have adopted more extreme methods. Manchester United and Arsenal have scored goals in recent weeks that might previously have been disallowed for offside. In fact, Gordon Strachan, the Southampton manager, found Ruud van Nistelrooy’s goal against his team a glaring example of offside. “Van Nistelrooy was interfering with play,” he said. “As soon as the ball was touched, he was going towards the ball. You might as well scrap offside now if you are not going to rule that offside.”

Thierry Henry was clearly in an offside position as play built up before his goal in Arsenal’s 3-1 win away to Wolverhampton Wanderers last Saturday, but he got himself onside as the final pass was played. A defender’s dilemma is obvious — does he stay with his man or allow him to roam at will behind the back four? If he chooses the former, he prevents the rest of the defence keeping a “high line” — ie, using the offside trap to keep the opposing team away from goal. If the latter, he will need eyes in the back of his head.

As things stand, there is nothing to stop a team playing with one forward onside and a second 20 yards beyond the defence, as long as his team-mates do not attempt to play the ball anywhere near him. Then he can lurk, inactive, until his chance comes to return to active play in a later phase, probably unmarked. In the school playground it was called “goal-hanging”. And, as Bill Shankly once said, if a player is no t interfering with play, what is he doing on the field?

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