Knowledge Atlas
Explore by Rule
How sports are governed — the rules, and the officiating and scoring that enforce them.
90 topics·26 sports connected
What this is
Rules are what make a sport a sport: how play is governed, what is allowed, and how the officiating and scoring systems enforce and record it.
Why it matters
Rules are one of the first things a newcomer meets. Organising them alongside officiating and scoring makes the governing structure of each sport easy to navigate.
How to explore it
Open a rule to see the sport it belongs to and the scoring and officiating around it, then explore the first-session guides where those rules first come up.
Rules across sports
Offside
Handball offence
Direct and indirect free kicks
Penalty kick award
Yellow and red cards
Throw-in
Traveling
Double dribble
Shot clock
Backcourt violation
Goaltending
Personal fouls and free throws
Out of bounds
Tennis serving rules
Foot fault
Let
Two-bounce rule
Volleyball rotation
Three-hit rule
Touching the net
Ball-handling faults
Badminton serve rules
Lane discipline
False start
Swimming stroke rules
Drafting rules
Playing the ball as it lies
Penalty strokes in golf
Order of play
Alpine race gates
Piste difficulty grading
Cricket creases
Innings and overs
No-ball
Wide ball
Leg before wicket (LBW)
How a batter is out in cricket
Test, ODI and T20 cricket compared
Offside in rugby union
The tackle
The ruck
The maul
The scrum
The lineout
Knock-on and forward pass
Off-side in ice hockey
Icing
Ice hockey penalties
The legal table tennis serve
How a point is won in table tennis
The padel serve
Ball in play and the walls
How a point is lost in padel
Out-of-court play in padel
Hindrance, lets and permanent fixtures
Continuous play and the time between points
Officiating
The officials and signals that enforce the rules.
Scoring
How sports are scored.
Tennis scoring
Football (soccer) scoring
Basketball scoring
Volleyball scoring
Badminton scoring
Padel scoring
Table tennis scoring
How running races are timed and placed
How swimming races are timed and placed
How cycling races are timed and placed
How fitness progress is tracked
Tiebreak scoring
How golf is scored
How alpine ski races are timed and placed
Runs and boundaries in cricket
Extras: byes, leg byes, wides and no-balls
Scoring in rugby union
Table tennis scoring and service order
Padel scoring and the tie-break
Tennis scoring systems
Explore from another angle
The same knowledge, entered a different way.
Explore by Sport
The master navigator — every sport, organised by category, what it builds, where it is played and how to begin.
Explore by Beginner
The complete beginner’s entrance — choosing a sport, first sessions, kit, mistakes and next steps.
Explore by Communication
How sport is communicated — in play, within a team, and around the game.
Explore across the knowledge base
Follow the threads that connect Explore by Rule to the rest of SocialSportHub.
Rules
- OffsideA rule that prevents an attacker from gaining an advantage by being positioned too close to the opponents' goal ahead of the ball and the last defenders.
- Handball offenceA foul in football committed when an outfield player deliberately handles or controls the ball with the hand or arm.
- Direct and indirect free kicksThe two types of free kick awarded in football to restart play after a foul or other stoppage.
- Penalty kick awardA one-on-one kick against the goalkeeper awarded when a defending player commits a direct-free-kick foul inside their own penalty area.
- Yellow and red cardsThe disciplinary cards a football referee shows to caution or send off a player for misconduct.
Officiating
- RefereeThe primary on-field official who enforces the rules, controls play, penalises fouls, awards restarts, and blows the whistle to start and stop a match.
- UmpireA match official who rules on lines, serves and dismissals in racket, bat-and-ball and net sports such as tennis, cricket and baseball — and, in racket sports, also keeps the running score.
- JudgeA judge is an official who scores performance in judged sports, awarding marks for execution and difficulty rather than counting goals or timing a race.
- Self-OfficiatingThe convention, central to golf and common in other sports, that players apply the rules to themselves and call their own penalties.
- Video ReviewVideo review lets officials re-examine footage of a contested moment to confirm or overturn a close call — a goal, a line, a foul — an aid used across many sports.
Disciplines
Glossary
Sports
- CricketA bat-and-ball team sport where sides take turns to bat and to bowl and field, scoring runs.
- Ice HockeyA fast team sport on ice that combines skating skill with quick passing and goal-scoring.
- CurlingA tactical team sport of sliding polished stones down a sheet of ice toward a target, with teammates sweeping to guide them.
Scoring systems
- Scoring in rugby unionThe five ways points are scored in rugby union and what each is worth — try, conversion, penalty try, penalty goal and drop goal — with the rule that surprises people about the penalty try.
- Table tennis scoringTable tennis is scored on every rally to 11 points per game, won by two clear points, over a best-of odd number of games.
- Tennis scoring systemsThe scoring methods the ITF Rules actually authorise — the advantage set, the tie-break set, the standard tie-break game, and the short sets and match tie-breaks in Appendix VI.
- Table tennis scoring and service orderHow games and matches are won — 11 points with a two-point margin, service changing every two points, and the expedite system that stops a game lasting forever.
- Tiebreak scoringA tiebreak is a short deciding game used in racket sports to settle a set that has reached an even number of games, scored in simple numbers to a fixed target.
How this page is maintained
- Content type
- Atlas dimension
- Provenance
- Tier A — evergreen educational
- Verified external sources
- 0
- Content updated
- 2026-07-13
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