[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by interpretTHIS

It bothers me that nobody has posted or attempted to dissect the actual rule:



In this particular case, the actions of one robot led to another robot being tipped. The head referee determined that those actions were part of the strategy that the offending team was playing (presumably defense.) Whether or not this determination was correct is a different matter (head referees are humans and need to make decisions,) but by the letter of the rule, the head referee is certainly in their realm to make this determination.

As a side note, other reasonably astute observers made the same determination as the head referee. In the seconds leading up to the tip in this case, the GA said "But 3548 is just really playing the hardest D," which gives clear indication of the strategy that that observer believed the team was playing. The resulting action of that strategy, "the tipping", is what resulted in an invocation of G24. Now we follow the sentencing through: FOUL and Yellow, but incapacitation occurred, so Red.

Interpreting this makes the call seem feasible.

"Defense" does not meet the definition of the quote above - it does not inhibit a robot through any of those methods, normally. It is only a "strategy" if the tipping is an intentional part of the defense. Under your logic, literally any time a robot tips over when someone is playing defense on that robot would result in a Red Card. Lots of teams would build robots very differently if that was the case!