{"id":401018,"date":"2026-04-28T05:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/401018\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T05:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:01:08","slug":"nrl-officials-respond-to-jason-saabs-audacious-tactic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/401018\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL officials respond to Jason Saab’s audacious tactic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ‘header’ tactic made by Sea Eagles flyer Jason Saab<\/a> will be penalised next time a player deliberately hits the ball forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saab, along with the Sea Eagles coaching staff, came up with a new tactic to stop players successfully thwarting his aerial threat.<\/p>\n

The tactic went unpunished during the Manly and Parramatta fixture on Sunday.<\/p>\n

NewsWire<\/a> is reporting that a contact from the NRL<\/a> has revealed to the publication that \u201cit is illegal to head the ball forward\u201d and if it happens again, he will be pulled up on it.<\/p>\n

The purposeful falcon is something spectators haven’t seen in a long time, and the NRL<\/a> deem it an illegal act in today’s game.<\/p>\n

Long-standing Sea Eagles assistant coach Jim Dymock<\/a> has gotten praise for the tactic in the Manly camp, who thought it was worth a shot to see if they could capitalise off it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat part is actually down to Jim Dymock<\/a>,\u201d Saab told the NewsWire after the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said during the week that when we put those kicks up, the other team lets me catch them and then they tackle me, so I decided I’d try something different by heading the ball forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn’t score off it, but it was exciting for the fans. It worked out better than me catching it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t have a football background at all, but you’ve got to think outside the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

Head coach Kieran Foran<\/a> also cited Dymock with the ‘eyes up’ play, and despite it not coming off, he praised his assistant for thinking outside the box for ways to come up with points.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a few of the coaches quite liked it up in the box. It was a bit different,\u201d Foran said in his post-match press conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Jim Dymock<\/a> has been putting it to \u2018Saaby’ to try that.<\/p>\n

“He’s very good like that, Jimmy, so he’s been challenging the boys to come up with a couple of plays like that. He was very happy in the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sea Eagles have gone undefeated in the four games Foran has coached so far, with plenty of hype generating for the Sea Eagles to do some damage in the competition.<\/p>\n

They will have a serious test of where their premiership credentials lie when they face the Penrith Panthers<\/a> at CommBank Stadium this Sunday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ‘header’ tactic made by Sea Eagles flyer Jason Saab will be penalised next time a player deliberately…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-401018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}