[Matt Reiland]

I personally don't think driving around on a tether is malicious, no way. We are allowed to run into robots, pull robots (some upside down which seems much more 'malicious') push robots (any contact this year can be considered malicious).... None of this is malicious but then there are these tethers. I don't believe they deserve any special treatment, teams were told to make them robust and non-entangling and they left it at that. If you want to do a 360 on it you should be able to in order to remove the 10 points the tether is giving the other team especially if it is the difference between winning and losing, this is part of leaving a flexible extension of your robot out on the field that can score as many points as a goal or another robot. In one match, we were warned for blocking a tether from reaching home and I think that was ludicrous.

I am not into starting a mob or anything but I think if they are going to let all of these gray area tethers to be out there legal, they should be fair game for everyone who doesn't have a motor on a long piece of wire or an upside down tape measure on their robot. I just want to see consistent rulings at each regional and rulings that are consistent with the way the game was explained.

I am SURE you will see more 'malicious' driving around tethers in the upcoming regionals and Nationals until everyone comes back to reality. And while they are at it maybe they should also start DQ'ing people for ripping up the carpet which I also saw alot of at GLR.