Tackle (football move)

The word is used in some contact variations of football to describe the act of physically holding or wrestling a player to the ground.

Unlike other codes, tackles in association football have to be predominantly directed against the ball rather than the player in possession of it.

A defender is permitted to use their body to obstruct the motion of a player with the ball, and this may be part of a successful tackle.

[1] Pulling a player to the ground in the style of tackle common to other codes is completely absent from the game (this would be considered "violent conduct" and result in a red card (dismissal)).

Tackles that involve lunging at an opponent with both legs, regardless of whether the ball is won, are generally considered to constitute serious foul play and hence result in a sending-off.

In Australian rules football, the move commonly described as a "tackle" is similar to in rugby and involves wrapping, holding or wrestling a player who has possession of the ball to the ground.

Tackling players not in possession of the ball is not allowed, this is considered “holding the man” and penalised with a free kick to the opposition.

Smothering, which involves using the arms or body to get in the way of an opponent's kick as it leaves their boot, is similar to a charge down in rugby football.

In American football and Canadian football, to tackle is to physically interfere with the forward progress of a player in possession of the ball, such that his forward progress ceases and is not resumed, or such that he is caused to touch some part of his body to the ground other than his feet or hands, or such that he is forced to go out of bounds.

Tackles can also be made by grabbing the ball carrier's jersey (or even hair, should it be long enough and allowed to dangle freely from beneath the helmet) and pulling him to the ground.

As mentioned above, the referee can declare that a play is dead if the ball carrier's forward progress has been stopped, even if he has not actually been taken to the ground.

Grabbing a ball carrier by the pads behind his neck and pulling him down is known as a "horse collar", a method which has been made illegal at all levels of American football.

Blocks that occur in the back of the legs and below the knees, initiated below the waist, or clotheslines are also generally prohibited and players who use them are subject to much more severe penalties than other illegal tackles.

In the National Football League (NFL), tackles are tracked as an unofficial statistic by a scorekeeper hired by the home team.

A 2012 New Zealand study found that over 659 tackles are made per game in professional rugby league.

High/reckless or stiff arm tackles laws once dictated any contact made above the shoulders was an offence.

Now, even if contact starts below the shoulders, if the head is involved in any reckless tackle it results in the offending player being given a yellow card and therefore sin binned.

World Rugby now defines a reckless tackle as being any contact where the tackler "knew or should have known that there was a risk of making contact with the head of an opponent, but did so anyway"[16] For various codes of football, variant codes have been developed which substitute out the tackling element, making the game less physical.