Leeds one trick pony

Quote: Ferocious Aardvark "Morally it was a knock on all day long.

My understanding (and I can't be arrsed looking it up, but a long time ago I seem to remember doing so) is that this all relates to the kick.

If I am running with the ball then I can drop the ball in a forward motion but if I kick it before it touches the ground, that is legal and it is play on.

But if I just fumble it, and it goes to ground, it is a knock on, and it makes no difference whether it accidentally makes an incidental contact that I didn't intend with my leg on the way down.

If you look up the definitions, I think you will find that the exemption is if a player "KICKS" the ball, which means what it says on the tin. It means a conscious and successful decision to propel the ball somewhere with your leg.

On any natural meaning, or common sense, or anything else, there was never in a million years any "kick" here, the ball by fluke bounced lightly off the leg and the player knew nothing of it and intended none of it. So the accidental contact with the leg does not negate the obvious knock on.

If he'd dropped it, but then seeing it was falling to ground, deliberately had a go at it with his leg, then it would be OK. Because that would count as a "kick".

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EDIT
Oh, go on then. Just for youAccidental Knock on
If, after knocking-on accidentally, the player
knocking-on .... kicks the ball before it
touches the ground,... then play shall be allowed to proceed.

Definitions means imparting motion to the ball with any part of the
leg (except the heel) from knee to toe inclusive.'"

I think the issue was not whether it was deliberate/accidental or kick/no kick, but rather the fact that it went backwards off his leg, rather than forwards, before it touched the ground. If it had accidentally hit his leg and gone forwards, then that'd still be a knock on, nobody is debating that. But Cummins seemed pretty sure that the fact it hit his leg and went backwards meant that it wasn't a knock on.