Stephen230
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I'd agree that by the standards of 'these days' the rags should have had a penalty. But equally the standards of these days are absolute bullshit. You're asking people with no history of playing the game to judge a 'natural position.' Pause the TV during any defensive action and look at all of the natural positions that the defenders are taking up, and you'll notice arms all over the place. Someone pointing to tell someone else to mark someone. Someone raising their arms because they're jumping or claiming an offside.
What we have now is a system that puts the burden on the defending player to actually put their arms in an unnatural position, to avoid being hit. What the original intention of the rule clearly was though, was to avoid having players deliberately standing with their arms outstretched in order to make themselves bigger. That would be a far better guideline. If the player didn't deliberately handle the ball, did they deliberately position themselves to make themselves bigger using their arms? Or did they just have their arms out because they were doing something you'd expect a defender to do?
It’s a minefield that you could have perfectly reasonable people discuss endlessly without ever reaching a consensus.
But I don’t think it’s an unreasonable starting point to suggest a hand being at head height as Grealish’s was is ever a natural position.