Maul

A phase of play where the ball carrier is held by an opponent but stays on their feet while teammates bind on to drive the whole group forward, distinct from a ruck because the ball never touches the ground and stays in the ball carrier's hands, passed backward through the moving mass instead. A well-drilled maul is one of the most physically dominant tools in rugby, a team can grind ten or fifteen meters of forward progress purely through collective power and technique, which is why it's such a favored weapon close to the opposition try line off a lineout. Defending a maul is genuinely difficult within the laws, a team can't simply collapse it deliberately without conceding a penalty, so stopping a well-organized maul usually requires matching physicality rather than a clever tactical trick. World Rugby maintains the official laws governing maul formation and collapse.