The forward pass in play

It's not always easy

This has been the week of the forward pass. It has become controversial enough of late to provoke inter-hemisphere comparisons and accusations. And so we have spent a week discussing it!

We spoke about it from a scientific point of view (To read it, click here) and from an historic point of view (To read it, click here). Now we shall talk about the law and some practical aspects of the forward pass.

To kick off, let's quote the law, a reasonably unchanged law for decades.

DEFINITION - THROW-FORWARD
A throw-forward occurs when a player throws or passes the ball forward.
Forward means towards the opposing teams dead ball line.

EXCEPTION
Bounce forward. If the ball is not thrown forward but it hits a player or the ground and bounces forward, this is not a throw-forward.

For all sorts of scientific reasons of velocity and so on, our physicist Case Rijsdijk, suggested that the law read:

The player passing the ball, the passer, must be in front of the player receiving the ball, receiver, at the moment that the ball leaves the passers hands.

He wanted the passer in front of the pass.

Peter Shortell, a lawyer of Chelthenham, says: "I have just seen the excellent article on the physics of the forward pass.

"It will probably go straight over the heads of a lot of people, but if they really work through the examples, I think they will understand the problem.

"However I think the suggested re-wording of the law fails, because you can have a forward pass without there being an identifiable  receiver. The law
has to refer purely to the actions of the passer and the movement of the ball. 

"My own suggestion: At the moment of release the ball must not be travelling forward faster than the passer."

A top refereeing authority, who wishes to remain anonymous, says: "I have been aware of the pass phenomenon for some years and the evidence - thank goodness - is no surprise. The important thing is that the receiving player is behind the passer on the release of the ball and the ball leaves the passer's hand backwards, what happens to the ball after that is irrelevant - see definition of 'throw forward'."

There we have it. As the passer passes the player to whom he passes must be behind him. The motion of the hands must be backwards or straight in the act of passing the ball.

What happens to the ball after that does not matter.

If the ball then hits the ground on its point and bounces umpteen metres forward, it does not matter.

If velocity means that the ball, correctly passed, starts on one side of a cross-line and ends on the other, it does not matter.

If you fire a long pass across the field and the wind blows it forward it does not matter - provided that the fellow passed to catches the ball.

But, you wisely say, what about the throw in at a line-out. If that gets taken at the wind the referee will blow his whistle and say that it was skew.

The line-out throw is different as it is a restart phase and there is a line of touch. The ball is required to be thrown in straight, that is along the line of touch, along a line. There is no line along which the ball must be passed.

So when Stephen Larkham of Australia is on the attack and outside the 22 when he passes to Clyde Rathbone and Rathbone catches the ball inside the 22, it does not matter. Rathbone was behind Larkham when he passed. Larkham's hand/arm movement was not forward and in fact Larkham is still ahead of Rathbone when the wing catches the ball.

Not that this condones forward passes. Not that it suggests the rebirth of Knute Rockne and his gridiron tactic.

Does this help and/or make sense?

One last thing. If the pass is forward, where do you give the scrum.

Western Province play the Eagles. Close to the half-way line and against touch, Egon Seconds, catches a high kick. He passes a long pass, nearly half the width of the field, infield to Breyton Paulse. The referee is standing next to Paulse and sees that the pass is forward. He awards a scrum to the Eagles where Paulse catches the ball.

That is not right. The pass is forward in the way it leaves the hands. Then the scrum should be where Seconds passed the ball - at least five metres in from touch.