Two clubs from the outer reaches of the FA Cup have produced the refereeing story of the week. Mulbarton Wanderers of the Isthmian League North won 2-1 at Woodford Town in a qualifying tie. They will have to do it all again on Tuesday, because the referee got a point of law wrong and the Football Association has ordered the match replayed.
The incident itself was small and technical. Woodford scored from a penalty. The referee judged that several attacking players had encroached, disallowed the goal and awarded Mulbarton an indirect free-kick. Law 14 does not offer that as an option. Where the attacking side encroaches and the kick is scored, the penalty is retaken. An FA sub-committee looked at it, found a technical error, and sent the tie back to be played again at Mulbarton.
Why a technical error is different from a bad decision
The distinction that matters here is not how badly the referee got it wrong. It is whether the decision existed within the laws at all. A disputed penalty, a corner given the wrong way, an offside call that replays contradict — those are judgement, and judgement is not appealable no matter how obviously poor it looks. Giving an indirect free-kick where the laws prescribe a retake is something else entirely. The referee applied a restart that is not written down anywhere.
Encroachment law has also been loosened in recent years, and now requires clear impact on an opponent before an offence exists. On that reading there was barely a case against Woodford in the first place. Even allowing that the encroaching attackers somehow put the goalkeeper off, which would be a stretch, the restart still had to be a retake. That is the part the sub-committee could act on.
Mulbarton are unhappy, and they have said so, warning about the finality of results and the integrity of the competition. Woodford, based in Redbridge, framed it as the tie simply being concluded under FA Cup rules. Whoever comes through on Tuesday hosts Gloucester City of the Southern League Premier Division South in the third qualifying round on Saturday, 3 October.
It has happened before, more often than you would think
The first case of this kind in English football is believed to be Edgware Town against Harefield United in the Spartan South Midlands League in 2006, and it was almost identical. Edgware scored a penalty, the referee spotted attacking encroachment and gave an indirect free-kick to Harefield. It should have been a retake.
Uefa made the same call for the first time in 2015, after a European Championship qualifier between England's Under-19 women and Norway. Leah Williamson scored a stoppage-time penalty with England 2-1 down, and the goal was chalked off for attacking encroachment. Uefa ordered the game restarted from the moment of the kick. The players reconvened five days later, Williamson scored, it finished 2-2, and England went to the Euros. Last year Bridlington Town had to replay a 2-1 FA Cup win over Knaresborough through no fault of their own, because the officials were wrong in law to refuse Knaresborough a fifth substitute in extra time. An FA Vase tie was replayed last season over a penalty shootout error.
So could a VAR mistake ever cost a result?
No, and the rulebook is blunt about it. The International Football Association Board states that a match is not invalidated by wrong decisions involving the VAR, and a separate clause says the same about technology malfunctions. There were 25 VAR errors last season. This season one has already been publicly acknowledged, after Manchester United lost 1-0 at home to Manchester City.
Take that derby goal. The VAR, Matt Donohue, did not make a judgement on a potential offside offence by Fernandez. Even if he had, weighing Fernandez's effect on Lisandro Martinez and goalkeeper Senne Lammens would have been a subjective assessment, not a misapplication of law. The same logic covers Luis Diaz's disallowed goal for Liverpool at Tottenham three years ago, where Darren England reached the right conclusion in law and then communicated it incorrectly. And in July 2020, when Orjan Nyland carried Oliver Norwood's 42nd-minute free-kick over the line at Villa Park and Michael Oliver never received the goalline signal, Sheffield United had no route to a replay either.
The best guide to where this ends up is Belgian. In December 2023, Yira Sor scored a rebound from a missed penalty in Genk's 2-1 defeat by Anderlecht. The VAR disallowed it for Sor's encroachment while missing encroachment by two Anderlecht players, which again should have meant a retake. Genk protested successfully, then lost on appeal when Belgium's Court of Arbitration for Sport restored the result, calling it carelessness in assessing the situation rather than a violation of the laws. The court added a line worth keeping: referees are not robots, and like players they make mistakes.
Tie facts: Mulbarton Wanderers 2-1 Woodford Town, FA Cup qualifying tie, voided by an FA sub-committee over a Law 14 error. Replay at Mulbarton on Tuesday, 29 September. Winners host Gloucester City in the third qualifying round on Saturday, 3 October.
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