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Old Tue Aug 03, 2004, 10:35am
Ref Ump Welsch
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I haven't personally seen the free-kick be used, but heard an "outrageous" use of the free-kick rule last year. A crew from our association went down to College Springs, Iowa (we're from Omaha, Nebraska) to work South Page's game versus Hamburg. South Page might have been the worse 8-man team in the state of Iowa during the 2003 season, getting beat by the 50-point rule week in and out. This game was no exception.

Hamburg was taking punt returns back for touchdowns early in the game, or spending 1 or 2 plays on offense before scoring easily. I guess their coach decided to show a little mercy and told his returner to fair catch the punts from then on, because they had South Page pinned deep the whole game (which only lasted 2 quarters because of the 50-point mercy rule). Each time the returner did the fair-catch, Hamburg ended up lining up for the free-kick. I guess the coach's thinking was getting to the 50-point rule by scoring field goals instead of touchdowns would perhaps extend the game, but I guess he didn't think about how good his kicker was!

Now, Iowa has gone to the 35-point running clock rule and threw out the 50-point game ending mercy rule. Hopefully this new rule will get rid of some of the massacres I heard about on their side of the Missouri River last year.
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