{"id":600454,"date":"2026-08-21T18:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/600454\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T18:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:54:09","slug":"west-brom-what-does-aune-heggebos-deception-of-a-match-official-ban-mean-for-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/600454\/","title":{"rendered":"West Brom: What does Aune Heggebo’s deception of a match official ban mean for football?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heggebo was charged with misconduct, contrary to FA Rule E3.1, by the Football Association on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

In his defence, West Brom argued that the ball took a deflection off the goalkeeper before making contact with Heggebo’s hand.<\/p>\n

The Baggies claim it affected the ball’s trajectory and left the player with “less than 0.1 of a second” to react.<\/p>\n

Given the accidental nature of the handball, the club argued, it could not reasonably be viewed as a deliberate act of deception. <\/p>\n

Since the ban was announced on Thursday,<\/a> West Brom have said they are going to write to the FA requesting clarification on how a player is reasonably expected to react should similar circumstances arise in the future. <\/p>\n

Retrospective disciplinary action has previously been taken against players guilty of simulation.<\/p>\n

According to English football’s governing body, the FA can take retrospective disciplinary action in situations where a match official may have been deceived. <\/p>\n

This process is not for debatable decisions, but only where there is overwhelming evidence to indicate that a player intentionally deceived a match official.<\/p>\n

However, West Brom believe that this charge is the first of its kind in English football following a rule change two years ago.<\/p>\n

The incident reopened the debate over the use of Video Assistant Referees (VAR) in the Championship. <\/p>\n

VAR is used in all matches in the Premier League but EFL clubs have blocked its introduction to date.<\/p>\n

In April, clubs in the second tier of English football turned down the chance<\/a> to introduce a version of the VAR system for 2026-27.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport understands the idea is closed for the foreseeable future and is unlikely to be resurrected by the clubs in a year’s time – so no opportunity to review incidents like this shortly after they happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heggebo was charged with misconduct, contrary to FA Rule E3.1, by the Football Association on Tuesday. In his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-600454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}