Quote:
Originally Posted by T^2
Of course the unequivocally wrong decision was made. An injustice was committed against these teams. The people in charge made a decision that may have been in line with the letter of the rules, but was immoral. If the written laws are immoral, then it is one's duty to ignore them. Blind obedience to the law is the very hallmark of fascism.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MattRain
2 Thumbs up. FIRST is to inspire students.... its just wrong about how this was called. Ok, so its not a written rule of FTC this year. But everyone fighting that it wasn't wrong, put yourself in this situation, without Frank's help... you would be mad at the outcome too!
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So now it's the head referee's responsibility to both enforce the rules as well as decide when the existing rules are wrong, and then just not follow the ones which they think are wrong? And if they don't, and instead decide to follow the rules that they have been using all year, they're being fascist? Really?
To address your point Matt: Put in the situation of the OP here, I can understand being frustrated and angry. But I would never ask a referee or other FIRST volunteer to go directly against the manual that they have been asked to follow, even if I was unhappy with the results of that.
My original quote is that having watched the videos several times I'm not 100% sure that the penalty should have been on Blue, which is what a lot of people here are arguing. If the referees at the event believe that Red's actions caused Blue to tip over the ball tube, then the penalty was applied correctly. If that's not the case and it was a mis-marked score sheet, then it was a mistake and the referees can correct that after the fact. However, what they cannot do is simply replay a match because that is what the teams in the match want.
I agree with the other posters in this thread that having the teams sign off on the scoresheets would have helped in this situation to make sure this wasn't an error, and this is why I always talk with teams after a match and explain any penalties that are called, so they understand what is being called before it is announced.