dead ball contact

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by maven

No. Clipping, like IBB, is called when a player approaches from the back, not when the blocked player suddenly spins at the last second.

That's why I wrote that A1 was facing the ball, to say that he hadn't just turned. I meant it to be a clear case of clipping where clipping would be illegal if the ball were live, but not a case of unnecessary roughness if the ball were live. I could've made it BBW, but I wanted a case that'd be more or less the same under all major codes.

The scenario I wanted to set up was where B1 thought the ball was being put in play, which means that if the ball had actually been put in play, B1 was going to clip an opponent, albeit probably not deliberately.

This is interesting to me because B1 is saved from the clipping penalty because the ball is dead, even though the rule against clipping was adopted very long ago not because of what was thought to be an unfair tactical advantage to be gained by it, but to protect anterior cruciate knee ligaments. It's rather like the bit about the horse collar tackle that wasn't completed until after the player being tackled scored a TD, and that therefore wasn't penalized because it didn't apply if the ball was already dead.