lateral

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by ajmc

Sorry Robert, Shakespeare nailed it with, "much ado about nothing". As for, "the foremost point of the body exclusive of the upper extremities", we are talking about a moving body, in the midst of a crowd of other moving bodies, on a wide open field.

leaving, "where the runner is positioned", which hasn't appeared to cause much serious concern for over....a long time, seems a lot more useful

I can't nail down exactly when that wording was put in, but it was around the turn of the century. Not that long a time. So why'd they do it?

if seeing a moving body in a crowd is so hard, surely the same applies to seeing the foremost part of the ball and many other things in the game. But if it adds too much to the burden, I'd be almost as satisfied for them simply to delete the recent definition, and go back to an intuitive understanding of "forward". That was what they had for over a century previous, and I don't know of any problems the lack of a definition caused.