Originally Posted by
liz
The competition has developed an expectation that if you are on the ground with the ball, you should "knock it out". Those knocks are never legal disposals.
In contrast, if you're on your feet and tackled and "knock the ball out" (aka dropping it when it's impossible to get away a legal handball or kick), you will usually get pinged for HTB even if you had zilch, nada, zero prior opportunity.
Although this is an inconsistency, it probably doesn't bother me as much as the blatant throws that happen when the disposer isn't being tackled - the brief glancing of a fist to the ball as it is propelled by the holding hand, and especially those where the ball is essentially tossed back over the disposer's head. Those have little to do with rewarding the tackler, though something to do with rewarding high pressure teams.
Something related that is bugging me this season is that players are being given an inordinate amount of time to dispose of the ball after being tackled. I get that the umpires want to allow players the chance to break a tackle. But in a recent season (could have been last year; might have been 2021) Brad Scott - then Head of Football - announced that they were going to be stricter on the requirement of players to immediately dispose of the ball on being tackled. They seem to have completely backtracked on that in season 2023. If a player is clearly in the act of trying to break a tackle, I don't have an issue with them being given a chance, with the proviso that if they fail, it should be HTB. But often a player's momentum has been stopped and the tackle has clearly stuck, and they are still allowed to rotate 360 degrees, sometimes 720 degrees, before dishing the ball off. All the time with their arms free to legally dispose of the ball.
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