What the Tap Tackle Feels Like

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Pride comes before a fall

There are a million ways you can be tackled in rugby, and they all hurt. The tap tackle is more painful than most, because it injures your pride. Rugby is a brutal, bruising contact sport where keeping control of the ball while pushing through pulverising hits is pivotal. The moment you know you are free of the pain and that white try line approaches, Elysium and eternal glory beckon.

That’s all in your head and you don’t need to get hurt to be hurt in rugby, your confidence can be ripped from you along with the air in your lungs, by a tap tackle.

The first time I was truly cut down by one I was a schoolboy. My stupid little scrum half legs got me free of the chase, in a game of sevens because I’m not so good I can really do it on a full pitch of fifteen. Scampering towards the immortal score, before I had time to know what was going on I was choking on grass, winded and confused. Nobody else was confused, they’d seen it.

My bell well and truly rung, I got to my feet with the game elsewhere. Someone told me I’d had my ankles taken perfectly and gone down like a (very small) sack of shit. It was humiliating.

The tap tackle is the technique which when you can’t reach your opponent to hit them properly, legally and preferably hard to the body, you whack one leg or ankle so forcefully the ball carrier loses balance. Done well they won’t know what’s happened until they are chewing mud and the ball is spilled from their grasp. It’s so contrary a weapon in an impact sport that relies on physicality, but it’s such a useful one too.

In a later game for my school, I used the tap tackle against a lad who’d gone past me in a way I’ll never forget. As the behemoth rushed past me, on my back, I smacked his right foot so hard it hit his left leg and he went straight down. Vertical. A glorious feeling for me, and for a last ditch tactic the tap tackle is an art I’d encourage every new rugby player to learn.

I don’t remember being tap tackled since that time in my teens. I do remember being ironed out a lot, though. The tap tackle is the punch you didn’t see coming.

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