wakey v Bulls

Quote: Ferocious Aardvark "You can't score a try with the arm under the ball, if the ball itself doesn't touch the ground. The ball must always touch the ground.

Consider a player sliding over the line on his back. He manages to free the ball-carrying arm and turns that arm sideways, the forearm firmly strikes the ground, but the ball is above the arm and not on the ground. Clearly, a try is not given. Thus, it is not enough that the ball-carrying arm touched the ground (that is relevant to the completion of a tackle).

If the ball is loose, then as long as the ball itself is on the ground, you can exert a downward pressure with any part of your front upper body ie arms OR torso, and that will be a try. Oddly enough, though, not your head. Although I believe the back of an arm or hand would count. But doing a headstand on the ball wouldn't count. Shame, as it would look pretty cool.

We have had phases in the game where a player plainly loses control of the ball but has been deemed to have retained a fingernail in contact with it and thus a try has sometimes been awarded. I never thought that was a try, because the rules seem to me to pre-suppose that what you need to do is a controlled action. But they aren't crystal. There was much debate for a while, and some very contentious (and contradictory) decisions but then in Aus they started chalking these dropped ball tries off, and it's all gone quiet since then.

The ball has to touch the ground. If it doesn't then it isn't a try. If it does, we then have to consider whether it was the Bulls, if yes, then every conceivable way it still might be disallowed must be examined.

There is only one way you might be awarded a try without the ball actually touching the ground, and that is to "score" it against the Bulls, but that is so trite, they didn't think it necessary to include it in the written rules. But everybody knows. I'd suspect that if scorer's hand under the ball was the only thing between it and terra firma then the try would probably be given on 'benefit of doubt' since it would be hard to believe that at least one blade of grass didn't come between his fingers and touch the ball...