[DougHogg]

Wow! I hadn't thought of that one. Great question!

In soccer, the referee often looks at the intention of the player committing the act. For example, if the ball hits a player’s hand, did he put his hand there to block the shot or was his hand there already and the ball hit his hand before he could move it? If the player intentionally blocks a shot with his hand, it is a penalty.

In this case, since the yellow ball was already on the mobile goal, if the red team’s robot wasn’t there, the small balls would not have gone into the mobile goal anyway, so the blue team had no chance to score on that goal, and they could have shot at the other goal. The red team’s intention was to remove the yellow ball, not block the mobile goal. Blue’s intention was to try to cause red to commit a foul by shooting where blue had no chance of scoring. My ruling would be that the red team was not goal tending, since their effort was to remove the ball which would actually help blue score.

Here are the updated rules:

4.3.1 Definitions
GOALTENDING – A ROBOT cannot interfere with a SMALL ball on its downward flight toward a goal or within a goal.

<G20> ROBOTS cannot GOAL TEND either the Mobile or Stationary Goals. If a ROBOT GOALTENDs or de-SCORES any SMALL ball, the referee will throw a red/green or blue/green 10-point penalty flag for each occurrence.

<G21> In the case of goal tending and assisting, while the ROBOT is manipulating a large ball, it is considered an extension of the ROBOT.