..but...it's what separates the sexes and has done for years.

Take away the offside rule and there's nothing left to bamboozle the ladies with.

Well, they've faffed about with the rules so many times: golden goal, silver goal, new offside, and seeding the World Cup playoffs were all dreadful, the only good one so far being the no-backpass rule, which is ace IMO.

Don't you just despise the self-satisfied bastards?

It would cause teams to park defenders at the back and remove room for attackers to eh... attack. Meaning way less goals.

Also: It would cut the fun after game discussions by about 90%

the biggest improvement to modern football has been 3 points for a win therefore penalising teams who settled for draws or sat on one goal leads - shankly's liverpool or george graham's arsenal wouldn't have won so many trphies with this system in place - rafa's liverpool have lost out on potential league triumphs not because they lost many games but because they drew so many

the offside rule with its 'not interfearing with play' or 'gaining an advantage' speculations have made it almost impossible for refs or linesmen to be consistant - what winds me up the most is penalising attacking play by giving decisions against the offensive team when the line is level - the attacking team should be given the benefit of the doubt and so often the decisions are wrong when replayed - it's hard for officials when the playing area is crowded but surely offside rules need looking at without affecting the fundamental nature of the game ( i smell yankification here )

... (and I frequently am) but many years ago (maybe in the mid '70s?) I'm sure there was an experiment that lasted a couple of seasons in Scotland whereby they extended the 18 yard line (i.e. the line parallel to the goal line) to the sidelines. The offside rule still applied, but an attacking player could only be offside if he was in that 18 yard "zone."

Does anyone remember this? Maybe I dreamt it.

My understanding is that they are only pondering it in as much as they are talking to the (field) hockey authorities to see how a similar move affected the game there. Given the complications of the modern interpretation of the rule, not to mention the fact that even the most straightforward calls are often made wrongly, I've always thought that serios consideration shoud be given to scrapping the rule completely.

The usual argument against it is that it would just lead to goal hanging, but I don't think that will be the case at the top level as it simply wouldn't improve a team's chances to effectively take one of their players out of the game by plonking him in the 6-yeard box for the whole match. It certainly isn't a factor of top-level hockey. You do see it a bit more at the level I play at, but you counter it by parking a defender on the attacker, which takes them out of the game and usually sees them quickly dropping back in order to get involved again.

One caveat to that is that the big aerial pass is a lot less common or effective in hockey than the 'route one' approach in football and the lack of offside would give a potentially huge advantage to the speedy forward over the slower defender. But speedy forwards already have that advantage, and if defenders were more focussed on marking and tackling rather than timing their stepping up just right to catch the striker running early, they may find that it doesn't count for as much.