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@JonoMarshall
"Creating space" is flawed in my opinion. In bike polo the wording should be about meeting people at speed and allowing you to fight for the same space, imagine the scenario of two players charging for the same ball, etc: Which one is holding space and which one is creating space? Is it simply about who gets their forearm in position first? Or do you expect ref's to judge how far out a player's forearm was at any given point in time?
My problem with forearms is that it gives you many different ways of initiating contact with someone, your forearm is able to target any part of another player (I even saw some forearm to head contact which was crazy), so essentially you go in at speed and now you can turn your predictable shoulder check into a much more targeted/unpredictable maneuver.
It's also blatantly apparent that forearms enable you to add power (push) in any given scenario whereas shoulders are (for the most part) much more static/predictable.
I tried to do the forearm thing and successfully pushed a few people off their bikes, it felt lame/wrong.