[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by TEE

Also, although this is not one of the three situations previously mentioned, the following is another interesting one that caused us to replay Match 60 3 times (we won the first 2, but lost the second 2, and so ultimately lost)

"<T17> If, in the judgment of the Head Referee, an “ARENA fault” occurs that affects either the play or the outcome of the MATCH, the MATCH will be replayed. Example ARENA faults include broken field elements, power failure to a portion of the field, improper activation of the field control system, errors by field personnel, etc.

In match 60, the clock that the blue alliance looks at started displaying random numbers and figures with about 4-8 seconds left in the match, and so we had to replay the match. When I went and asked the head referee how this fault affected "either the play or the outcome of the MATCH", he said it didn't matter; the field personnel classified it as an arena fault, and so the match had to be replayed. I showed him the rule, and he said "team 51 came and told me that the clock malfunctioned and affected their game play, and that's all it takes" (which I'm unsure if that's true or not... it seems absurd that a clock malfunctioning after the deployment period started would affect the play or outcome of a match). He then continued to say that he didn't care when the clock malfunctioned, that the fact of it malfunctioning at all was enough to replay the match. Later, when the blue alliance won, but the clock still malfunctioned, we replayed the match again anyways, in spite of the fact that it had no impact on anyone's gameplay.

If this precedent, and my reasoning, are correct, an arena fault doesn't actually need to affect anything for there to be a rematch. O.o

Thoughts? Comments?

Edit: Members of the blue alliance, if the malfunctioning clock actually did affect your playing, I apologize for calling it absurd

In the original match in question, the clock malfunctioned with approximately 15-20 seconds to go in the match. It was not after the deployment period had begun.

Team 903 from the blue alliance was lined up with the tower waiting to deploy their minibot and did not deploy at the 10 second mark because they didn't know how much time was left and they didn't want to risk getting their tower disabled. They ended up deploying well after the start of the deployment period and lost the minibot race. I believe the red alliance won the original match by 5 points, so the minibot race affected the outcome of the match.

I was sitting in the stands and the referee question circle was right in front of me (about 6 feet away). Members from 903 stood in the circle after the match. No one from team 51 was present while I was in the stands. Just about the time the head referee came to talk to the 903 student representative, I left the stands so I guess it's possible that someone from 51 later showed up. At that time, 903 was ranked in the top 8 so a win was very important for them.

I didn't find out the match would be replayed until about an hour later.

To be honest, at the time I was more upset at us for losing that match so I didn't care about the the clock issue. We delayed significantly before deploying our minibot (due to the clock issue) so we weren't going to win the race, but just getting the minibot up the pole would have won the match. That was the ONLY unsuccessful deploy we had all weekend (the minibot bounced off the pole) so all I could think about was what were we going to do to keep that from happening again. The clock issue was a bit of an afterthought at the time.