A question about tackle heights when there is a (perfectly legal) head level hand-off.

[Martin Doughty]

Suppose a defender attempts to tackle low, only gets hold of an arm (that might be wrapped around the ball) and brings the player to ground. We would probably call it a good tackle.

But what happens if the arm he grabs is an attempted hand-off at head height, and he safely brings the ball carrier to ground. Is that a high tackle? The initial contact might be to exactly the same part of the arm, but this time it was all at shoulder height or higher.

Has anyone experienced this in a game and how did you handle this?

 

[Ciaran Trainor]

I doubt anyone would see grabbing an extended attempted hand off arm as a high tackle. It's what the tackler does next that matters. Nothing above the sternum, or an old school hand and foot tackle, play on.

 

[Mipper]

We had quite an extensive discussion on this at our society meeting and the guidance we ended up with was that hand/arm tackles are fine (as long as they're not recless/dangerous etc).

The reasoning I think, was that the purpose of the tackle height laws are to avoid head on head contact, which was deemed unlikely with an 'arm tackle'.

 

[Dickie E]

Its interesting that in RL they have all sorts of problems with specific types of tackles (crusher tackles, chicken wing tackles, etc) that we don't see in RU

 

[Nilo]

Generally the advice we get at our meetings is that the core focus is stopping tackles where "heads are in the same space" - so if the situation leads to a ball carriers and tacklers head being in the same space, this is what could be considered a high tackle that should be stamped out. If there is no risk from the tackle then play on, perhaps just a word with the team to be careful.

 

[Marc Wakeham]

Generally the advice we get at our meetings is that the core focus is stopping tackles where "heads are in the same space" - so if the situation leads to a ball carriers and tacklers head being in the same space, this is what could be considered a high tackle that should be stamped out. If there is no risk from the tackle then play on, perhaps just a word with the team to be careful.

Yep.

What Society are you Nilo? I'm Cardiff.