Commentating on Spurs v Newcastle he said that many penalties given for handball were not justified.This is exactly what I have been saying for ages.Quite how you can give one for a ball travelling at,say sixty miles an hour from twenty feet away is beyond me.That gives less than a quarter of a second to get the hand out of the way,it just isn't possible to do.My view is that 80% of handball penalties fall into this category.
This got me thinking, which led to some maths: Some of the hardest shots every hit were measured at 80mph+, so I imagine a lot of shots could be around 50mph. Converting units, thats 22 metres per second. Average human reaction time is 0.2s. That means the ball can travel 4.4m before the defender has even had time to react. To me, giving a penalty for the ball hitting an arm before the player can physically react is very harsh.
