Service
Usually a 50-50 chance scenario is adopted at the start of a match in order to determine who should serve first (e.g. one player puts the ball behind their back and their opponent guesses which hand it's in). In order to initiate a point, the server must first throw the ball so that it hits the front wall above the bar, then clips the side wall. Once the ball has bounced on the floor, the server hits it so that it hits the side wall followed by the front wall. If, on the hit part of the serve, the ball hits the front wall first then the serve is referred to as a 'blackguard' (pronounced 'blaggard'). The receiver has the option to take a blackguard, as long as they say 'yes' before striking the ball. If three consecutive blackguards are served without being taken then the server is deemed to have lost a rally.
In doubles, only the receiver initially designated to return serve may do so, unless the serve is a blackguard. In this instance, either receiver may choose to say 'yes' and return the ball.
As the ball may be hit with either hand, right-handed players will typically use their right hand and the front, right-hand corner of the court to serve. Left-handed players will serve with their left hand, using the front, left-hand corner of the court.
Read more about this topic: Rugby Fives, How To Play
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”
—Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington (1769–1852)
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)