Whistle blown on referees

THE human eye is unable to detect an offside position during football, explaining why so many decisions are controversial, a researcher claimed yesterday.

Dr Francisco Belda Maruenda, a family medicine specialist in Murcia, Spain, studied the physiology of the human eye to see if it could process all the visual information needed to apply the offside rule.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he concluded that this was beyond the capacity of the eye.