After blow news

For those of you familiar with the open rules concept (a set of evolving rules for HEMA competition designed to promote skill and athletic prowess), will I hope have seen some of the discussions in places such as sword forum and the WMA coalition sites (don't worry if not, I'll post them here very soon), one of the contested features of the rules is that of  the after blow whereby if a party is struck, he gets one step (or jump or lunge) in which to strike his assailant back. This one step limit is, as Caroline Stewart has said "simply delimiting the extent of a double hit in an exchange or pass at arms. If you are hit within the allowable span of the afterblow,  then you failed to hit under cover, to hit without being hit in return".
However though we as a school feel that the afterblow encourages good fencing and increased skill, we have been able to provide little historical precedent (other than the Belgian Longsword fencing guilds felt the same way and used it to similar ends).
 Now thanks to the hard work of Piermarco Terminello I am able to offer this snippet from "Annonimo Bolognese"


"Annonimo Bolognese"
The art of fencing with blunt weapons is called playing, and it is not permitted for a player, after they have received a blow, to pass more than one step forward to wound his enemy. The reason is this, if he could take as many steps as he wanted this would not be playing but fighting for real.

Because quite often it occurs that after receiving the blow a player steps forward as much as he likes and throws himself at his enemy overcome by anger, and as soon as he runs towards his enemy he too tries to wound to him anywhere he can and give him a few hits, and for those which weren't seen sometimes you don't know how it went due to him running wildly towards his enemy more than one step.

But why do I say that when one has received a blow they must not take more than one step but another might say that he should take as many steps as he likes? To him I say that such an action happens in the art of combat when one has a wound where one can decide to step forward and retreat as much as one likes. But often it happens that one receives a wound and has the desire to want to throw oneself upon the enemy to get revenge but the blow was of such a nature that one is unable to move and in fact falls to the ground. And it is for this reason that in the art of playing one cannot step forward more than one step after receiving a blow, because if you want to take more step I will tell you the reason given above, that if the sword was sharp the blow could have been of a nature such that you would not want to run head but you might instead fall to the ground.”

I hope this gives a valuable insight into the historical relevance of the afterblow.
Many thanks to Caroline Stewart from School Of The Sword for making this available.
Dave