Offensive contact

  • July 2, 2021 at 6:51 pm #1906
    Thomas Macqueen
    Participant

    I have a question about a situation that has come up a couple times recently and I would love some clarification about what the ruling should be.

    Over winter we run an indoor league. A couple of teams have been playing using a defensive zone.
    As an offensive strategy, players have been setting up near the end zone, with a team mate running through to catch the disc mid jump landing in the end zone. The issue however is this often makes contact with the defensive player zoning on the end zone line.

    At what point would this become an offensive foul?

    Often there are situations where the defensive player is not completely stationary, but shuffling along the line and the offensive player jumps through. Because the defensive player is not stationary, the ruling has been made a defensive foul.
    There has also been the scenario where the offensive player has attempted to jump into the endzone and landed on defensive players feet whilst they have been stationary.

    Looking through the rules I couldn’t see anything to resolve this question (There is a good chance I just missed it). Im not sure if this should be a Spirit discussion or if it is actually a rule violation.

    Thanks heaps!

    July 3, 2021 at 3:59 pm #1907
    Rueben Berg
    Keymaster

    So if at the moment when the offense player jumps it is clear that they will collide with the expected position of a moving defender, it is a foul by the offense (see rule 12.7). If the defender and offense player are both moving to the same spot at the same time, that would be an offsetting foul (see rule 17.9).

    Also worth noting the official annotation to rule 17.8.1: If the offense commits a foul after establishing possession in the air, but the foul was caused by actions not related to the process of making the catch (eg while attempting to intentionally land in the end zone), this should be treated as an indirect foul.

    Hope that helps.

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