Tap-tackle

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A tackle made from behind the running ball-carrier, where the tackler dives to touch the player's ankle and trips him up.

    "France's own stand-in stand-off Trinh-Duc missed with a drop-goal when well set but then set off on a curving run through a scattered defensive line which carried him deep into enemy territory until Weepu's desperate tap-tackle finally brought him down."

Verb
  1. 1
    to tackle with a tap-tackle

    "Farrell drilled home a 46-metre penalty and should have had another when Pollard, attempting to jink his way out of defence, was tap-tackled by Anthony Watson and penalised for not releasing."

Example

More examples

"France's own stand-in stand-off Trinh-Duc missed with a drop-goal when well set but then set off on a curving run through a scattered defensive line which carried him deep into enemy territory until Weepu's desperate tap-tackle finally brought him down."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.