Hey, the original post is just a copy and paste of my post on two different forums. Is that cheating gtwbam?
We have been back and forth on this on the other forums and this is what I come up with. For Federation ball, the location of the ball only matters when the player that the ball is out of bounds. For instance, if he is contacting the sideline, then it matters where the ball is at. If the ball is still over the field of play, the R player caused the ball to be out of bounds, so no kick OOB. If the ball is still airborne but beyond the side line plane and not yet hitting the ground when R touches it, the interpretation is that the kick caused the ball to be out of bounds when R touched.
This is from the Football rules differences, 2006, page 108.
Now, in the orginal post, since the player is not out of bounds (since we can't find the definition of in bounds), he contacted the ball so he touched the ball in the field of play. Any time a R player touches a free kick prior to the ball being declared out of bounds, R will put the ball in play at the out of bounds spot- in this case, the spot where the ball crossed the sideline.