A running bounce, or simply bounce, is a skill in the sport of Australian rules football

Australian rules football

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...

 (necessitated by the Laws of the Game

Laws of Australian football

The laws of Australian football describe the rules of the game of Australian rules football as they have evolved and adapted, with the same underlying core rules, since 1859....

) when a player, while running, bounces the ball on the ground and back to himself.

The Skill

Football is played with an ellipsoidal (oval-shaped) ball, rather than a spherical one, so the technique for bouncing one back to oneself while running requires practice. To execute a running bounce, a player should:

• Hold the ball: in his preferred hand; with that hand on top of the ball towards the end closest to his body, and; with the ball angled around 30° upwards from the horizontal;
• While running, push the ball firmly to the ground around 1.5-2m in front of him, angling the ball slightly with a quick flick of the wrist, so that it strikes the ground towards the end furthest from the player's body, tilted slightly downward.

Executed properly by a player running at a normal pace, the ball should bounce directly back into his waiting hands.

Players need to readjust the distance of their bounces when running at different paces. When running faster, the ball must be bounced further in front of the player, and when running slower, the ball must be bounced closer. At very slow or stationary paces, this correction is more difficult, because it is difficult to correctly angle the ball for the return bounce at such a short distance.

Australian children (in Australian rules football states) generally learn how to execute running bounces over a few years while they play at school and in junior levels, so to top-level players, the running bounce is a natural skill. Outside of these states, however, it is a skill few people possess due to AFL's limited reach.

Nevertheless, bouncing an oval-shaped ball is still a volatile skill. Even top level players will occasionally lose the ball while bouncing it, by accidentally bouncing the ball on its point, only to see it quickly skid away from him or her.

Rules

The rules of football state that a player running on the field with the ball must take a running bounce at least once every fifteen metres. If they run too far without taking a running bounce, the umpire pays a free kick for running too far to the opposition at the position where the player oversteps his limit. The umpire signals "running too far" by rolling his clenched fists around each other - similar to false start

False start

In sports, a false start is a movement by a participant before being signaled or otherwise permitted by the rules to start...

s in American football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 or traveling in basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

.

While the distance of 15m is explicit in the rules, the lack of markings on the ground makes it impossible for umpires to accurately judge these free kicks. Regular watchers of football generally have a feel for the average time between running bounces which "feels right", and umpires usually penalise players when they exceed this by more than a few steps.

Touching the ball on the ground

Instead of executing a running bounce, players may bend over and touch the ball onto the ground, never actually letting go of it. This has the disadvantage of taking much longer, increasing the risk of being caught, but it has the advantage of reducing the risk of making a bad bounce and dropping the ball. This technique is always used on rainy days when the mud or water on the ground makes a regulation bounce impossible, but is also used by some players, particularly in lower levels, who never perfected the running bounce.

Statistics

Running bounces are most commonly made by attacking half-back flankers, also known as link-men, or by outside/receiving midfielders. They generally accept the ball from a rebound, and have wide space in front of them to run into, giving teammates time to create options at half-forward. Link-men Jason Gram

Jason Gram

Jason Gram is an Australian rules footballer for the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League .-AFL career:...

 of St Kilda and Kade Simpson

Kade Simpson

Kade Simpson is an Australian rules footballer, currently playing with the Carlton Football Club in the Australian Football League....

 of Carlton

Carlton Football Club

The Carlton Football Club is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria. The club competes in the Australian Football League, and was one of the eight founding members of that competition in 1897...

, and midfielders Nathan Foley

Nathan Foley (footballer)

Nathan Foley is an Australian rules football player. He plays as a midfielder for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League ....

 and Brett Deledio

Brett Deledio

Brett Deledio is an Australian rules football player currently playing for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League.-Early life/career:...

 of Richmond

Richmond Football Club

The Richmond Football Club, nicknamed The Tigers, is an Australian rules football club which competes in the Australian Football League. Richmond shares healthy rivalries with Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon. After winning five premierships between 1967 and 1980, the club hit the depths in 1990,...

 were both in the AFL-wide

Australian Football League

The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...

 top 5 for running bounces in 2007.

Related Skills

The requirement that a player performs a specialist skill in order to be allowed to run with the ball is common and necessary in many sports. Introducing these skills prevents players from taking the ball in hand and running the length of the field unchallenged. In this way, the running bounce is related to:

• dribbling
  Dribbling
  In sports, dribbling refers to the maneuvering of a ball around a defender through short skillful taps or kicks with either the legs , hands , stick or swimming strokes...
  
   in basketball
  Basketball
  Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
  
  ;
• the solo (kicking the ball to oneself while on the run) in Gaelic football
  Gaelic football
  Gaelic football , commonly referred to as "football" or "Gaelic", or "Gah" is a form of football played mainly in Ireland...
  
  .

The running bounce should not be confused with the ball-up

Ball-up

A ball-up in Australian rules football describes a method of restarting play at a neutral contest after a stoppage within the field of play. It is not to be confused with a boundary throw-in which occurs in most cases when the ball is forced out of bounds...

, also often referred to as a bounce. The ball-up is an unrelated umpiring skill used to restart play from a neutral contest.