I think the spirit of the rules would want the foul called immediately, especially on the attacking side. But.....
If the goal occurred a second or to two after the punch, the ref should be excused. They were probably concentrating on the play on the goal. I think this is a situation that unless the goal was scored significantly after (5 seconds) the incident started (the punch was thrown), I wouldn't fault the official.
An interesting point is whether the ref could have conferred with an assistant about the sequence of events, than possibly disallowed the goal. While not a ref, I would have been looking for a rationale not to count it, just to penalize the player for not maintaining control. |