THERE'S no doubt David Elleray should not have pulled up Jussi Jaaskelainen for holding on to the ball too long at Newcastle last Saturday.

Now let's hope the FA learn from the incident and do something about the six-second rule.

Jussi and Elleray received plenty of criticism for their parts in the shambles and you had to have varying degrees of sympathy with both.

The rule was brought in to stop goalkeepers wasting time and in no way could anybody accuse Jussi of trying to do that.

Commonsense should have told Elleray that he had no need to implement the law.

Having said that every keeper knows he has six seconds to distribute the ball and Elleray cut him a reasonable amount of slack by giving him half as much again before pulling him up. I doubt anything would have been made of it had Newcastle not scored from the resulting free kick. But now the situation has been given nationwide coverage the FA should act to make sure such a ridiculous situation is not allowed to happen again.

It is not the rule itself which is at fault. It has done a good job in speeding the game up by stopping goalkeepers wasting ludicrous amounts of time. However, there is no point having a rule that is implemented about as often as Hayley's Comet comes around.

It happens every week and referees turn a blind eye!

What is needed is an amendment of the rule to give keepers longer to distribute the ball - say nine or 10 seconds - and then for referees to implement the rule rigidly so that everyone knows where they stand.

Whether that happens or not I don't know but one thing is for sure - every time the West Ham keeper gets the ball on Saturday Wanderers fans will be counting to six and giving the ref justifiable stick if he fails to pull him up for holding on to it longer than the law allows.