On the opening Saturday of the Championship season, West Bromwich Albion's Aune Heggebo scored with his hand at Carrow Road and the goal stood. Five days later the Football Association banned him for two matches for successfully deceiving a match official, a charge believed to be the first of its kind in English football. Four months earlier the division's clubs had voted against giving themselves any means of catching it.
West Brom won 2-1. Heggebo got on the end of a Jimmy-Jay Morgan cross from the left in the 75th minute and the ball went in off his arm, with Norwich players and staff protesting to officials who let it stand. "It was the decisive moment in the game and should have been spotted," Philippe Clement said afterwards. "There are four officials and one of them should have seen it."
Heggebo was charged with misconduct under Rule E3.1 on the Tuesday, denied it, and an independent regulatory commission found the charge proven on the Thursday. West Brom's appeal argued the ball had deflected off the Norwich goalkeeper, Vladan Kovacevic, immediately before touching Heggebo's arm, leaving him "less than 0.1 of a second" to react and making the contact accidental rather than deliberate. The club has said it will write to the FA asking how a player is reasonably expected to react should the same thing happen again.
The rule itself is not new. "This rule has been around for a while," said Martin Cassidy, chief executive of Ref Support UK, who welcomed the ban. "They have never really used it as much as they could." The FA can act retrospectively where a match official may have been deceived, a process meant for clear deception rather than debatable decisions.