Out on the full - now a needless rule?

[Hawk_francais]

Wasn't the original intention of this rule to stop players kicking the ball out when they had no options? Deliberate rule is now there to stop this anyway. It's stupidly harsh when players get paid a free kick against just because the ball brushed their ankle on the way out.

What do you reckon: ditch it, or keep the rule to punish skill errors?

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

I have no issue with the 'out on the full' rule. But, you fo raise a good point regarding unnecessarily technical decisions that really have no bearing on why the rule was introduced in the first place.

Giving a free kick based on an umpire's guess when it grazes a guy's boot on the boundary line is totally unnecessary and pointless in the context of the rule.

Same goes for when the ball grazes a fingernail on its way through for a goal.

Who cares??! If the contact is not sufficient enough for the umpire to see it - then why bother stuffing around adjudicating on it?

Waste of time and resources.

 

[Wallaby]

Prior to the Out on the Full rule being introduced it wasn't uncommon for defenders to have a look up, see no teammate to advantage, or even a reasonable contest to kick to, and kick the ball into Row M.

Deliberate was never paid - despite it being a rule.

Something had to be done - the OOF rule has been universally accepted as a Good Thing. It is a skill error.

If you remove the OOF rule, defenders will just boot the ball straight along the boundary to a contest - if it stays inbounds, the contested pack will likely push it out of bounds - if it just floats out of bounds, well, that just happened. Not deliberate.

My suggestion is to retain the OOF rule, and remove the deliberate rule. I think defenders should be able to use the boundary line if they want to. If they perform a skill error by kicking it out on the full (and maybe include handpassing on the full, and ruck tapouts on the full) - free against.