For 140 years time-wasting has afflicted football and there is still no solution

T he historian Peter Hennessy has argued that Britain relies upon what he called a “good chap theory of government”, under which the precise wording of its parliamentary rules and even the absence of a formal constitution remain largely irrelevant so long as the people in charge of stuff have the right kind of moral fibre.

Football might never have been closely associated with good chaps, but it works the same way. The nation’s fields have always been prowled by genuine rotters, individuals who have thoroughly deserved such terrifying nicknames as “Chopper”, “Psycho”, “Bites yer Legs” and “Keano”, and the sport’s lengthy list of laws has only ever kind of governed them. There is much that remains beyond the control of referees, most obviously the passage of time.

Time-wasting is not a new issue. Nottingham Forest once attempted (unsuccessfully) to have the result of an FA Cup defeat overturned because their opponents had been at it so brazenly – and that was in 1885. Slightly more recently, the start of the 1971-72 season saw the so-called Refs’ Revolution, when officials were ordered to be more assertive after, according to the Guardian’s former chief football writer, David Lacey, “some teams developed wasting time to a fine art” (the problem being that referees asserted themselves in such a wide variety of different ways they had to be told to stop asserting themselves again).

In 1982 an all-star three-man committee – Bobby Charlton, Sir Matt Busby and Jimmy Hill – was tasked by the Football League with coming up with ideas to improve the game and homed in on time-wasting. Ironically its own time was being wasted, its suggested remedies being completely ignored. It is also an issue that in 1992 prompted the then Fifa