During the game, that virtual first-down marker you see on your TV could now be on the field itself before the ball is snapped.
He wanted the Europeans to take a lead and so put down a marker for the future.
He has put down a marker - that he will challenge German leadership of the debt crisis.
"The South Africans are absolutely determined to come over here and lay down a marker, " he told BBC Sport.
The main objective was always to raise standards, he said, and the new inspections were "laying down a marker".
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For this reason if no other, his public judgment would lay down a marker around which average opinion could coalesce.
In vetoing the three space programs, the President laid down a marker.
"We're here to lay down our marker", said crew member Frances Houghton.
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Several are the subjects of motion to regret - which don't actually stop them but put down a marker if problems arise later.
For the youthful Mr Edwards, then, using the current race to put down a marker for the election beyond makes a lot of sense.
Sunday's second Group C contest was supposed to take second billing, but in torrential rain in Poznan the Croatians laid down a marker for the tournament with a clinical display against the Republic of Ireland.
Worcester's coaching staff will reflect on a ragged end to the game as being evidence of the need to keep working hard, but they will feel they put down a marker ahead of the end-of-season play-offs.
But South Carolina got started as the trigger primary on the Saturday before the Tuesday that was Super Tuesday, and it laid down a marker, and the rest of the Southern states tended to follow it quite reliably.
Perhaps, in frustration at his failure to advance the peace process, he wanted to put down a marker, warning Mr Netanyahu that he would not tolerate his continuing refusal to give ground on a whole range of issues.
One small firm, Sensaris, which makes wireless sensors to detect air pollution, has decided to make a filing under the international Patent Cooperation Treaty, which is a way of putting down a marker without the expense of a full patent application.
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, of the Claremont graduate school, speculates that his real reason for running was to put down a marker for 2001, when term-limits make him leave the state's Senate and Mr Riordan will no longer be eligible for the mayor's job.
Swansea's free-flowing football was, at times, sublime against Leeds and their finishing clinical as Rodgers' emphatically laid down a performance marker for their promotion push.
He set the marker down on the conference-room table, and smiled.
Wales coach Warren Gatland wants to lay down an international marker this autumn against the southern hemisphere giants, with the World Cup less than 12 months away.
If he gets over the gain line consistently, makes some busts and passes out of the tackle, he'll have put down a big marker to be an England centre for years to come.
Leeds had lifted the National One trophy just six days before the Twickenham final and had hoped to put a marker down in the showpiece event ahead of their return to the Guinness Premiership.
South Africa on the other hand will be on a high with two teams reaching the Super 14 final and will be wanting to set a marker down for their World Cup meeting with England in September.
Troubled though she was as a human being, with flaws and shortcomings well aired in the biographies written after her death, someone needed to put a marker down for individual liberty and limited government before both disappeared under the waves.
The match could not have started much better for the Welsh side, who laid down an early marker of intent when Chopra got across Alex Baptiste to toe-poke a cross from Peter Whittingham that smashed against the crossbar after just four minutes.
She says perhaps it's genetic -- some biochemical marker handed down from mother to daughter -- or perhaps it's the daughter observing the mother's behavior.
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Others, however, believed a marker had been put down that signalled a change of policy down the road.
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By the same token, in the highest rungs of even our dumbed-down democracy, cultural capital is a similar marker for career and mating success.
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