San Diego: Tech Foul in Finals

[David8696]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I have no intention of blaming anyone. I am posting what I think I see. I also have no idea what the outcome of that match was.

What happened was very odd. The way the ball was thrown was directly at the blue alliance robot. It could appear as both a poorly timed inbound to a robot up the field, or possibly a way to mess with the blue alliance robot.

The way I saw it is that the human player (knowing if we didn't score FAST, we were going to lose) tried to inbound it to 2485, who was moving in his direction, quickly and let them pick it up while it was bouncing. 330 drove into the path of this semi-desperation throw, but clearly the human player could never have thought the ball would be able to knock out 330's ball.

Another important note: The rule cited (G32) is worded "Strategies employing TEAM member actions to deflect opponents’ BALLS are not allowed." Two things seem to jump out at me here:
1) The fact that instead of G31 ("Strategies employing TEAM member actions to inhibit ROBOTS are not allowed."), they chose to invoke G32, implying that they felt that the human player's actions were against the blue ball, rather than the robot. Were the action interpreted as an attempt to mess with 330, they would have invoked G31 instead.
2) The term "strategies" is extremely important here. It means that unless the action is a clearly intentional attempt to deflect the opponent's balls (it could even be interpreted as requiring repetition), the foul should not be called. This has been shown in such situations as the Week 1 regional when a robot intentionally tipped another robot, but because it was clearly not their overall game strategy, but instead simply "taking an opportunity", it was considered not to be a foul, as G27 is worded "Strategies aimed at the destruction or inhibition of ROBOTS via attachment, damage, tipping, or entanglement of ROBOTS are not allowed."

It seems to me that this technical foul should not have been called, especially not to cause the end of a regional (we were down 1-0, and had we won there would have been another match).