A spectacular mark (often called a specky, speckie or speccy for short, alternatively known as a screamer or a hanger) is a term for a type of mark in Australian rules football. The typical spectacular mark involves a player jumping up on the back of another player in order to take the mark, or catch.
The spectacular mark has become a much celebrated aspect of the sport. Many of the winners of the annual Mark of the Year competition could be considered 'speckies', and commentators will often call an individual specky "a contender" in reference to this competition and the mark's likeliness to win it.
The movement of other players beneath a marking can cause the flyer to lose balance in mid air and land or fall awkwardly, enhancing the spectacular nature of the mark. In the 1980s it became common for exponents of the spectacular mark to achieve extra elevation by levering or propping the hands or arms off the shoulders of opponents. According to the strict interpretation of the rules, this is in fact illegal interference. Sometimes umpires, however, may interpret in favour of spectacular play if the interference is minor and deemed to be part of the jumping action. The AFL Rules Committee in 2007 effectively disallowed this type of spectacular mark altogether with the advent of the controversial "hands on the back" rule.
Read more about Spectacular Mark: History, In Popular Culture, Stepladder, Notable Exponents
Famous quotes containing the words spectacular and/or mark:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.”
—Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942)