Unlike American football, rugby features no pads or helmets, no timeouts, no forward passing, and every player can tackle, pass and kick the ball when necessary. Instead of four downs, teams have ...

In rugby, all passes from the hand must be either lateral or backwards. Players can kick the ball downfield but any of their teammates hoping to retrieve possession from such kicks must be behind ...

In windy conditions the human kicking tee is still occasionally used. Image caption, By the 1960s the kicker placed the ball on a lump of soil dug from the pitch with the heel of the boot.

But kick well and the nature of modern rugby union makes putting boot to ball a more efficient use of possession than it might first appear. Given the physicality and intensity of breakdown ...

The biomechanics of kicking in soccer and rugby provide an essential framework for understanding the coordination of muscular, skeletal and neural systems during high-speed, high-impact movements.