This Canadian High School's Punt Return-Punt For A Touchdown Is Simply Incredible

Bravo, Canada. You've managed to take a relatively mundane part of American football and kick it up a few hundred notches. Punting back a punt for a touchdown? Sheer genius.

Here's a quick primer on why this play isn't incredibly illegal for our neighbors to the north, courtesy of Prep Rally:

Unlike American football, Canadian football holds that once a punt travels more than 10 yards downfield, the kicking team can recover the free ball and regain possession. In this way, Canadian punts are essentially just like American kickoffs.

However, in a nod to rugby, Canadian football holds that on scrimmage kicks (i.e., punts and missed field goals), the returning team can respond by immediately punting the ball back to the other team, creating a free-for-all where whichever team gets to the ball first will retain possession.

In related news, Canadian high school football is fucking awesome.

Update: As a point of clarification, reader Eric P. sends in the following, which further explains the rules at play here:

Maybe I'm the 99,000th Canadian to email you about this so far today but here she goes. This is going to be confusing.

The kicking team cannot recover their own punt, except for the kicker and any players that were behind the kicker when he kicked. Which is usually all eleven—yes eleven—of the other players on the field. Sometimes when a team is punting into an extreme Prairie wind, they'll have an onside player behind the punter so he can run down and try recover the short punt after it hangs up in the air.

In a nod to the games rugby roots, that convention doesn't only apply to punt plays but to all plays. So, technically, a receiver could catch a pass, punt it forward, and all players that were behind him when he kicked it could try to recover it. You sometimes see that strategy on the final play of a game when the offense is down by a touchdown or less, in lieu of a Stanford band multi-lateral attempt. Or, as in this case, the punt returner could do the same. You'll notice on the video that a bunch of teammates spread out wide and behind him when he kicked it forward.

[ Prep Rally]