Many of you will by now have seen the video of Alex Greenwood receiving a second yellow card for time-wasting in Manchester City’s game against Chelsea. If you haven’t, you’re welcome to do so on the BBC website. I think 99.9% of people agree the sending off was at best harsh, and at worst an incorrect decision from an inept official, but it does warrant further dissection in my humble opinion.

A foul is awarded to City in their own half after an errant Chelsea tackle. The players move away and Greenwood settles behind the ball 11 seconds after the offence was committed. She remains in the same position until 18 seconds when she begins to look for an open teammate. In this instance Chelsea were marking high so Greenwood starts her passing motion at least two or three times before spotting the referee running towards her around the 25 second mark. At this point, presumably fearing some sort of admonishment, she passes the ball sideways 27 seconds (by my timing) after the original foul was awarded. The referee, Emily Heaslip, then shows Greenwood a second yellow card, followed by the red card.

I’m going to talk initially about why this decision arguably wasn’t technically a mistake, per the rules of the game, and subsequently why it certainly was a mistake in the spirit of the game.

If you locate law 12.3 on the FA website and find the list of cautionable offences, literally the very first example is ‘delaying the restart of play’. So there is no argument that, IF Greenwood did so, the referee applied the laws correctly in producing a second yellow card and sending the player off.

There are two main factors that I believe influenced the referee to make this controversial decision. The first is the widely-discussed crackdown across the entire sport on the egregious time-wasting epidemic within professional football. To be honest I think all fans are frustrated by it at certain points during a game. Want to have a tactical reshuffle, why not send your keeper down after a nothing challenge midway through the second half? They are the one player who can’t be made to go off the pitch after all, so no harm no foul, except us fans have to wait 5 minutes for the game to restart. And yes, I know it should be reflected in the time added on, but I didn’t come to watch 10 minutes of time added on, I came to see the actual, you know, match. Anyway – rant over. Whatever I think about it, referees have certainly been asked to be stricter on cynical delays in getting the ball back in play. The second is the amount of motions toward the ball Greenwood makes. Although I disagree with the decision, the optics of it aren’t fantastic, and out of context I likely would have thought she was draining time off the clock at the end of the game.

Context is king though – at least I think that’s a phrase. This wasn’t the 92nd, 84th or even the 62nd minute, this was the 38th minute. I mean, I detest time-wasting, but its a bit optimistic to think you can eek out the remaining 52 minutes (plus added time) of a game by delaying dead-ball plays by 15-20 seconds apiece. Whilst Greenwood does start and stop her passing action several times, in my uneducated opinion, this is primarily because the targets she’s looking to find are all put under pressure by Chelsea marking high. Also, although the entire scenario does unfold over nearly 30 seconds, the time between Greenwood settling behind the ball (11 seconds), and the referee beginning to approach her (around 25 seconds) anyone with fingers or a calculator will tell you is just 14 seconds. That doesn’t strike me as long enough to be considered as deliberately ‘delaying the restart of play’.

This is where there needs to be some clarification, because as outlined, almost everyone who has seen the incident agrees it shouldn’t have been a sending off. However, technically, did she delay the restart? You could have that argument. You wouldn’t win, but there is that thread to pull on. I’m not sure you can have a set time for a player to take a free kick, in-game situations are always different, so ultimately it has to be the referees judgement as to whether the delay is intentional. The trouble is the laws of the game does not make a distinction in terms of intent, which means the official is the sole arbiter. In this case Heaslip believed Greenwood deliberately delayed the game to gain a benefit – the fact almost everyone else in the world disagrees – makes no difference. A costly decision, an almost certain error, but hopefully a lesson the entire game can learn from.