Rugby Union
The International Rugby Board (IRB) has ruled that a dangerous tackle of this type, sometimes also called a 'tip tackle', should be punished with a straight red card. An IRB memorandum on dangerous tackles from 8 June 2009 states: "At a subsequent IRB High Performance Referee Seminar at Lensbury referees were advised that for these types of tackles they were to start at red card as a sanction and work backwards."
The IRB amended the law (Law 10.4(j)), as of December 2010. In the previous version of the law, the tackled player's head or shoulders had to hit the ground first for a referee to penalise them. The revised law removes the possibility of a spearing tackle not being penalised due to "defensive actions of the tackled player when the arms are outstretched to break a fall".
Read more about this topic: Spear Tackle
Famous quotes containing the word union:
“These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched.—Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery—in fact, its only enemy.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)