Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

UPDATE: I found more mention of the penalty box in Canadian football in 1930. I wonder when they finally abandoned it?

I ran across this little tidbit in a newspaper account: In Canadian rugby football, "a player tackling around the neck is termed a 'scragger' and is sent to the penalty box for five minutes." This was written by an American who watched a rugby football game in Canada.

Has anyone else heard about the use of a timed penalty in Canadian rugby football?

From what I've been able to determine, there is a "sin bin" in rugby, but the account was for a Canadian Rugby Union football game played in 1933 (i.e. NOT English rugby).

Rugby (both Union and League) still has a penalty box, to the best of my knowledge.

I have since reached out to a guy who knows his stuff (he's a big resource for the Blue Bombers) and, yes, Canadian football was still using timed penalties and the "penalty box" in 1933. They removed that penalty mechanism from the Canadian code in 1934.