The more I watch this, the more I realize I have little to no idea what's going on.
So, when a guy falls down while holding the ball, what happens?
It appears that he can hand it off backwards towards his friends. And the other team isn't allowed to touch it until the guy picks it up and throws it?
Someone enlighten me.
Luckily, I'm pretty sure that both of my regular readers have significantly more idea what the hell is going on here.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
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7 comments:
It's true, we do. And it's complicated to explain the rules of offsides. But play doesn't really stop. You ruck over the ball, essentially the player on the ground needs to let go and get the heck out of there while the two teams try to come in and grab the ball. The team that gets there first, wins. If two come together, then you have a ruck and the winner of the ruck is the team that gets the ball out and tosses it... more complex than that... and Trevor was a forward, so he understand those rules better. I was not, so I just know concepts.
I almost forgot, both of your more heavily invested readers are both former ruggers.
Su explained it very well, but I'll expand on it.
When the ball carrier is tackled, The person tackled must "release the ball and allow for another player to pick it up (not restricting it to either team) - and they are required to not interfere with the defense trying to challenge for the ball. More often enough, you just curl up in to the fetal position and try to protect the face/nuts, but you attempt to remove yourself from the impending ruck as fast as you can.
The most strategic thing to do (in most cases) is to "present" the ball to your team's side and allow them a chance to grab the ball and play on, either by picking it up and running more with it, or a series of backward passes to the Backs to move laterally down the field into, hopefully, open space.
Now, when the tackled player releases the ball, both teams have a shot at grabbing it and playing it. Typically, Forwards will post up over the ball (to protect from a defensive ruck) and allow the fly half to grab the ball and pass it to the backs (thus setting up a play). If the defensive team is able to push back the offensive ruck before the ball is played, they may be able to attain possession of the ball and turn the ball over.
Does that make any sense? The rule of Offsides comes into play as well, but for intents and purposes, above explains the basic concept of the ruck. Quickly, offsides means to have to gain possession of the ball from "your side", and not from behind the person you tackled, unless you approach from your side. Hope that is somewhat understandable.
Also, Su, I'll be posting again soon. I should have internets at my house soon, and things are calming in the office. I have a backlog of things I still need to post.
Hope you all are well.
See, Trevor understands better. My job was to cower on the ground... I rarely had to ruck, that's not a fullback thing.
Yay! More Trevor!
So, basically the team with the ball makes a "Fortress of Dudes", as I was referring to it, in order to prevent the opponent's Fortress of Dudes from jumping over the dude laying down and grabbing the ball. Because they need to come from their own end of the field, or they'll be "offsides" or whatever.
Did I get that right?
Also, I'm presuming that the Fortress of Dudes is in fact known as "ruck".
I would call that perfectly acceptable terminology and also the general idea of the ruck, yes.
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