My YouTube-fu is weak. Can anyone find the epic hit Ronnie Lott put on Christian Okoye?
That’s it. Atwater, not Lott.
Knocked his ass backwards. Not easy on a 260# running back.
This thread was made for Earl Campbell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty3Van5utZc
(this clip is more enjoyable without the sound, imo.)
Sonny Bill Williams rings some bells forgive the music.
Dwight Smith on Amani Toomer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVQ2DIPM9Vs
This is one thing I never understood about hockey. Is the fighting officially sanctioned by the NHL? It must be because there were 3 refs standing around letting them get ready to throw down. Once they take up fighting stances why don’t hte refs bench them both?
I don’t get it.
Once they start fighting, it’s inevitable that they will get a five-minute major penalty for fighting. The refs already know that.
The reason they don’t jump in when two guys are squaring off is that they don’t want to get caught with a right to the jaw. If two players are on their feet and about to fight, the officials will let them go until they tumble to the ice, or until they end up in a clinch, and can safely be jumped on. They just don’t want to dive in while two 250 pound guys are flailing their fists around, which i can understand.
Fighting has long been part of professional hockey. Both fighters get a 5-minute penalty and then can return to the game.
I know its been a part of hockey as long as pucks have, but I don’t understand why it is sanctioned like it is.
Simply put, two guys fighting to blow off steam is better than two guys swinging sticks at each other if tensions get too high.
Ask Ted Green if he would have rather fought with Wayne Maki or had the stick fight.
The best explanation I’ve heard is that it allows the players to police themselves to a certain extent. Rarely will two guys just start a fight for no apparent reason. There are usually previous plays where one felt a “dirty” play was made, the players have a history, or a physical game is just coming to a head.
The point is that the fight provides consequences for actions that are technically legal, but still considered against the spirit of the game. A 6’6 269 pound defense man lays out a 6’1 219 pound forward that’s a perfectly legal hit. However it also has a greater chance of hurting smaller guy (who often is a star and goal scorer). Maybe next time he might be less likely to deliver such a hit if he knew the consequences were him having to go toe-to-toe with someone his own size who has a history of knocking people unconscious.
I think of it like the retaliatory HBP in baseball. Everyone KNOWS it’s intentional, but nobody does anything. Then after it happens the umps tell everyone to simmer down and play ball.
Aren’t a load of those tackles fouls? I thought there was a requirement for the tackler to wrap his arms around the body of the player being tackled?
No, none of them are fouls. Basically, the main rules regarding tackling in rugby are:
(1) no tripping (with your legs)
(2) no tackles above the shoulders (i.e., nothing around the neck or head)
(3) no spear tackles, in which you pick a guy up and drive him head-first into the ground (danger of broken neck)
It’s certainly true that in both varieties of rugby (league and union) most tacklers tend to wrap their arms around the ball carrier. You don’t see as many big shoulder-charge tackles as you do in American football, because neither rugby code has a “down by contact” rule.
In American football, you can hit a guy really hard and the play is over as soon as he hits the ground. Hence “down by contact.” But in union and league, if you knock a guy over like that and don’t have your arms around him, he can get up and keep running, or pass the ball to another player. That’s why the spectacular shoulder-charge tackles tend to be discouraged in rugby, in favour of tackles where you wrap your arms around the guy and keep a hold of him.
Also, the nature of rugby means that, for the most part, the two teams are facing each other in something like a line, and that a player who receives the ball usually does so knowing where the defenders are. There’s not as much chance of being blindsided by a defender. In American football, by contrast, the movement of players is such that a receiver might be running straight at a defender as he goes up to get the ball, giving the defenders more opportunities to hit the receivers in a vulnerable position. There’s much more movement in different directions in a typical American football play than in rugby, and all those players in motion in different directions opens up the opportunities for big collisions.
If I understand you correctly, this is not true. In Union (no idea about league), an opponent must make an attempt to wrap the arms around the ball carrier. Not doing so results in a penalty kick.
Well, you learn something every day. A check of the IRB Laws of the Game shows that you are correct.
I played rugby union all through high school, and was an avid follower of the game for a long while after that, and i’ve never heard that rule. I’ve lived in the US for 8 years now, so i haven’t really kept up with the changes in the game. Is this a recent addition to the laws? I must say that, in all my years of watching rugby, i don’t think i’ve ever seen that rule enforced by a referee.
Unless they’ve changed the rules recently in League, shoulder charges and other non-grasping tackles are allowed there, unless they are high or the ball carrier has his feet off the ground.
I wouldn’t fret about that. When I lived in Oxford I had a friend who had been playing union since he was five, and spent a worrying percentage of the time he wasn’t on the pitch watching union on TV. He freely admitted that he didn’t understand most of the rulebook, either.
It may be; a lot of the rule changes in recent years have been safety issues. I started playing about the same time you moved to the US, and at my level I see that penalty called about once a game.