I must admit I haven’t read the rule book for years, since I gave up umpiring. But I watched a SSN 2018 Magpies v Lightning game today and Josh Bowring gave Pretorius the ball when Shae Brown flicked the ball onto her as it was going out of court.
Personally I thought this was very clever play and should be a throw in to Magpies. Instead, Bowring said “Deliberately throwing the ball into the player” and gave a free pass to Lightning. In this instance, the ball was right in the corner, there was no way to flick it back into play without hitting Pretorius, so it was not a deliberate contact, it was a desperate act with only one option.
When did this rule come about?
I mean…. is it a subset of “contact”? If you totally pegged the ball into someone’s face sure, that’s contact (using the ball), but surely if you cleverly hit the ball onto an opponent it’s brilliant and you should get the throw in?
