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Thanks smartcooky, so in both cases it's legal that the player jumped or was lifted into the gap after the ball was thrown.
But what about this scenario I also saw on the weekend. Here on the picture you can see that metre gap has completely disappeared and the two lifters arms are centimetres apart, and what happened was the jumper in competing for the ball kind of ended up leaning into the black jumper and knocking him away from the catch and the ball being overthrown.
In this scenario from what I've understood of what you said. The jumper is legal as he's going for the ball, but the lifter who can't be considered as 'jumping for the ball' should have been ruled offside for closing the gap?
It would be a hard ask to expect jumpers to stay a half-metre away from the line of touch while holding a 110kg player up half a metre to the side and still expect them to still bring him down safely and in a legal position as the Law requires. The Laws don't say anything about lifters/supporters in this regard, so I might ask this one on the refs forum. There are a number of UK National Panel referees there who will be familiar with this.