Congratulations to all the award winners from the Spring 2016 season who can all be seen on the awards page on this site!
We had a great voter turnout and we still ended up with two ties, so the competition continues to get tighter each year.
Congrats also to Catherine Boucher for winning PotW for week 2!
The MFL is starting it's player of the week award this season, and the inaugural winner is Alexandre Bresse from Les Gros Coqs who had 151 receiving yards and 3 TD's on Saturday! The player of the week winner is shown on the front page of the site for the entire week, so I guess you could say it's a pretty big deal.
If you want to nominate someone for Player of the Week in the future, just let us know who you think deserves it and we'll put them up for consideration. So remember, if you're not winning PotW and you think you should, blame your captain for not nominating you!
Despite the 25-43 score, the Spring 2016 final was close until the very end, and in fact was a 19-19 tie at the half.
The Outlaws and Coqs were in a defensive battle for most of the game, with Dominic Lefort finally creating separation and sealing the deal with back to back pick sixes 8 seconds apart!
It was a great season for both teams with both squads showed championship talent from start to finish, and every player on each team gave a tremendous effort in the final, but in the end Les Gros Coqs captain made enough plays (including several massive slides in the mud!) to pull it off for the championship victory.
Congratulations to them and thanks to everyone for a great spring season!
We'll see you in the fall!
This is our second entry in the MFL ‘Rules of the Game’ articles, where we let you players know about the intricacies of the game that you’re playing!
This time we’re talking about two different topics: leaving your feet and getting flagged early.
Leaving the Earth
First, let’s talk about what happens when you as a ball carrier leave your feet. It’s important to note that these rules only applies to ball carriers, and not players diving for flags or to make a catch.
If you are running with the ball in your possession our rules allow for what could be described as ‘hops’. Essentially, you are allowed to leave your feet when running, but you cannot make a leaping motion and most importantly you cannot significantly raise your knee! So, you’re allowed to spin or hop to the side (or forward!), but you cannot lunge, leap, or in any way aggressively hurl yourself forwards!
As a separate case, if you are falling, or in the opinion of the referee you are beginning to fall, then you are down immediately at the place where you began to fall. This is a rule a lot of players don’t seem to know!
The reason for this rule is simply safety. A player falling to the ground can put themselves in a lot of danger if another player is leaning in to grab their flag. Many players have taken a knee to the head when this rule was not in place! As a defender, if someone is falling you should back off and play safe and leave it to the referee to call them down. This is the why we add the part about ‘beginning to fall’ as it would be unfair for a defender who is backing off to be penalized by a runner regaining their feet just to run past them.
Don’t Flag Me Bro
Another rule that seems to cause a lot of confusion is what happens when a defender takes your flag before you catch the ball.
There are two possible answers to this: first, the referee believes that you were de-flagged very close to when you were catching the ball (similar to defenders being allowed to hit receivers a little before they catch the ball in tackle football), in which case you are considered down once the catch is made; or second, that the referee believes you were de-flagged well before you caught the ball, in which case the defenders must then attempt to de-flag you again even though you have fewer flags now!
In this same vein, if you are bobbling a ball and get de-flagged before you complete the catch, then you are down where you were de-flagged and not where you finally caught the ball. You don’t get a bonus for bobbling the ball! In tackle football you likely wouldn’t be making that catch at all if someone hit you as you bobbled the ball!
So, that covers leaving your feet and early flagging. Hope this helps make all of our players a more rules conscious bunch!
