Whistle Use
Referees use a whistle to indicate the commencement or restart of play, to stop or delay play due to an infringement or injury, or to indicate that time has expired in the half. The whistle is an important tool for the Referee along with verbal, body and eye communication. The use of whistles is not mandated by the Laws of the Game.
Before the introduction of the whistle, referees indicated their decisions by waving a white handkerchief. The whistles that were first adopted by referees were made by Joseph Hudson at Mills Munitions in Birmingham, England. The ACME Whistle Company (based at Mills Munitions Factory) first began to mass produce pea whistles in the 1870s for the Metropolitan Police Service. It is frequently stated the referee's whistle was first used in a game between Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Norfolk in 1878; however the last such fixture known to have taken place between the two clubs was in 1874. The Nottingham Forest account book of 1872 apparently recorded the purchase of an “umpire’s whistle” and in 1928 an article by R M Ruck about his playing days in the early 1870s referred to the use of a whistle by umpires to indicate an infringement.
The whistle was not mentioned in the Laws of the Game (LOTG) until 1936 when an IFAB Decision was added as footnote (b) to Law 2, stating "A Referee's control over the players for misconduct or ungentlemanly behaviour commences from the time he enters the field of play, but his jurisdiction in connection with the Laws of the Game commences from the time he blows his whistle for the game to start."
In 2007, when IFAB greatly expanded the LOTG Additional Instructions section, a full page of advice on how and when the whistle should be used as a communication and control mechanism by the referee became available.
Read more about this topic: Referee (association Football)
Famous quotes containing the word whistle:
“All we who prefer to live
Have a little whistle we give,
And flash, at the least alarm
We dive down under the farm.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“The bud of the apple is desire, the down-falling gold,
The catbirds gobble in the morning half-awake
These are real only if I make them so. Whistle
For me, grow green for me and, as you whistle and grow green,
Intangible arrows quiver and stick in the skin
And I taste at the root of the tongue the unreal of what is real.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)