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The bottom line to this rule in Canadian Football is that on a punt and FG try, the receiving team MUST play the ball uless it goes OB. They have no option to fair catch, and if they just leave the ball to roll around, as my fellow Canuck suggested, the kicker and any players that lined up behind him when the ball was kicked, are eligible to jump on the ball and if possession is gained, in most instances would see yards gained for 1&10. I think its a great feature of our game as I have to chuckle when I see five or six NFL bemoths carefully following the slowly rolling ball from the four to the three to the two etc...
On the unsuccessful FG try, the ball must also be played by the receiving team (they get this same five yard zone) unless it blasts through the end zone for the single point. If not, the receiving team can try and run it out, concede the single point (I LOVE the rouge!!) or even punt it back out again, which happens sometimes in the dying seconds of a tie game when a single point is critical. Many years ago I saw a Wpg vs Sask(?) game where the ball got punted back and forth four of five times with no time left on the clock...great fun to watch.
Further to the "no yards" rule, and with apologies for the length of this post, a couple of years ago my son's HS team went down to the San Diego area to play a US HS team in a semi annual exhibition match using US rules. The only rule issue our kids got into trouble with was the first time the US team punted the ball to us, and as the ball was coming down neither of our returners had signalled fair catch. Our coach quickly realized that their lives were in danger with the kicking team bearing down on them ready to time their hits, and he yelled to our kids, "SOMEBODY CALL FAIR CATCH!!", and one of the kids finally stuck his arm up, but not the kid who caught the ball, and we got a flag for that but we got out alive....kinda commical...
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