[EricH]

Originally Posted by bduddy

I don't think they're exactly comparable, and I think it both cases the refs made the right call in the end. At SVR 2008, IIRC (I was there) the refs had earlier made an incorrect call similar to the one that was made in the final match (that a ball being supported by an opposing robot did not count), and it was never publicly corrected or announced that the call had been incorrect. Again IIRC, a robot on the initially losing alliance spent a significant amount of time at the end of the match attempting to partially support the trackball rather than perhaps trying to score another way, so they were still operating under that assumption. That's why I think the fairest decision there was indeed to replay the match and send both teams to Championships.

HQ was the one who issued the invitation to CMP, well after the event. The replay was the problem call there.

Referees make that sort of call all the time. For whatever reason, a match is scored incorrectly. Usually, the score is quietly corrected later; only rarely is there any announcement. For this particular call, that was not an option. All the time through, they had the option to adjust the score. That was all it would have taken to correct the situation. However, the head ref called for a replay, which I will admit he did have grounds for (human error being one of the items a replay can be called on), but was probably not the best decision. I know that everybody watching via webcast and on CD was wondering what was going on, why is there a replay, why don't they just adjust the scores--and the real kicker was that some of the robots were already in their crates when the replay was called for!

The reason I'm calling that up as a close case was that there, even though the basis for the mistake was different, it was a VERY similar mistake, the type that changes a winner. In that case, however, the announcement of the error (and the handling of the results) were handled in such a way that maximum confusion resulted. In the case at hand, there was minimum confusion, though there was much disappointment.