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Originally Posted by Steve W
They were getting silly with some refs concentrating on the tetra and the line more than the pushing and ramming that was going on.
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Not shutting down the team pushing is even worse.
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Steve:
As far as pushing vs. ramming. What kind of "pushing" did you see? Pushing is very legal, as long as....
A.) it is down low
B.) it has an obvious purpose (i.e. keeping another robot from capping or preventing a robot from getting to a point on the playing field where it obviously wants to go)
and
C.) it doesn't involve getting underneath a robot and lifting them up.
Using your arm to push on a tetra held by another robot up high is also legal, but this type of defense is a much riskier proposition, as repeatedly striking another robot's arm directly up high is not permitted, nor is pushing on their arm directly causing them to tip over.
The rule is very clear in this matter. Maybe I should print out G25 on a banner the size of a freakin' Freightliner and bring it to each competition I attend? It really is a well written rule. Any ref who flags robots for engaging in the above legal activity has grossly misinterpreted that rule.
Now, back to the topic at hand....
To be fair, rules do exist in the rulebook which cover these breaking the plane situations generically, but they are far too vague and leave far too much up to the individual interpretation of each ref crew. The NFL manages all of its refereeing crews so that the rules don't change appreciably from one week to the next. Personal foul rules are well defined. Ripping the head off the QB isn't legal at one week and punishable by death the next. You may see a little variation in the way the penalty is called by different referees, and that is natural - we're all human, but the range of variation is minimal enough not to incite rebellion amongst the teams involved. All this wishy-washiness we're witnessing simply causes people like you, me, and everyone else who's chimed in on this topic to become frustrated by the inconsistency in interpretation from one ref crew to the other. FIRST needs to eliminate this inconsistency as soon as possible by defining SPECIFIC rules that ALL refs must call the same way, preferably before next week's regionals begin. Once and if that occurs, I expect everyone will be their usual GP self, accept whatever ruling FIRST makes, and both play the game AND call the game to the best of their abilities according to the rules we've been given.