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Mon 14 Sep 2015 | 01:38
The Liam Gill quick lineout quarterback throw in the NRC

6
Comments

Lat weekend in the National Rugby Championships in Australia discarded Wallaby flanker Liam Gill pulled off this gridiron style lineout throw that was mightily impressive. Not being able to pass quickly to the nearby man, he simply went over his head, halfway across the field.

While all the talk lately has been about League convert Jarryd Hayne in the NFL, this one got a bit of attention for being quarterback-like. It's not the first time we've seen this on the rugby field, with Barbarians loose forward Steven Luatua doing something similar last year.

In 1997 Springbok Andre Joubert did the same, setting up a Percy Montgomery try.

If you're good enough and can reach your players without too much fuss, why not.

Posted By: Grant Constable

6 Comments

  • stroudos
    3:11 PM 16/09/2015

    Cracking read that Larry. Thanks for sharing.

  • larry
    2:19 AM 16/09/2015

    It's been sometime now that a quick lineout throw doesn't have to be perpendicular to the line of touch. The throw-in still can't go forward, though, and of course one doesn't have to throw the ball in from exactly where the touch judge raises his flag, but from behind that point as well.
    Being an American I've always found it funny that it took decades for rugby players outside the United States and Canada to figure out how to throw an oval ball like Americans have since the forward pass was legalized over 100 years ago in American football. It was Pete Dawkins, who had played American football as a cadet at the Military Academy, West Point, who went over to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, who introduced that sort of throw for lineouts when he played wing for Oxford, winning a Blue in the late 1950's. He apparently proved himself on the cricket field as well, as he was a very good baseball player too. I don't know if that style of throw-in caught on very quickly in the UK and Ireland, or elsewhere for that matter. I can remember my first years of playing rugby as a university student (Santa Clara), and half our schedule was against men's club sides, not just other schools. There were a few foreign older players
    on these teams, early 70's, playing on the wing or hooker, throwing the ball in at lineouts in an underhand fashion like throwing free throws underhand in basketball (which no one does anymore), or cupping the end of the ball in the hand and tossing it toward the forwards end over end as if tossing a hand grenade. Memorably I remember playing a thirds side match against Stanford, as a hooker, in '74, and as I got the ball and readied for the throw in, near Stanford's 22, and as the forwards were forming up (hands distance between and sideways that season as the law) the flyhalf came by and whispered to me to throw a long pass past the forward. I did so, he ran up and caught the ball, and proceeded to juke a few Stanford backs to score a try.

  • drg
    12:24 PM 15/09/2015

    Many thanks

  • reality
    10:11 PM 14/09/2015

    Indeed it did, DrG.

  • drg
    9:59 PM 14/09/2015

    Did it go from needing to be straight to doesn't need to be straight? (reverse of what I thought?)

  • drg
    4:58 PM 14/09/2015

    That was pretty damn impressive....

    Sorry to adopt a potential Buzz Killington stance, don't quick lineouts need to be straight these days? I might have missed the memos on these. A while ago quick lineouts were fine as long as they didn't go forward then, I seem to recall (perhaps incorrectly) that they then needed to be straight :/ - Happy to be corrected on this....

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