Should teams be allowed to decline a replay?

[bobl]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I believe so.

During semi final 2-3 at UNH there was a dead ball debacle that hurt our alliance. The match ended with our alliance in the lead however the head ref/FTA decided to call it a field fault because the refs made a mistake and declared a rematch. The problem was their mistake was in not giving our alliance a new ball in the final 20 seconds of the match which would not have helped our opponents beat us. The next match was replayed due to a pedestal issue and our alliance did with the following match.

In the above case, having to replay the rubber match of the semis is a HUGE deal and since they replayed it after the winning alliance was hurt and granting us our ball would not have changed the outcome of the match we should have been allowed to decline the replay.

Team 58 was part of this alliance and I found this particular situation frustrating as a spectator because it wasn't explained very well. I could not understand why the match was replayed when the fault affected only our alliance and we had outscored the opposing alliance by a comfortable margin.

I feel that after the circumstances of the fault have been explained to each alliance the alliance that was impacted by the fault should be allowed to refuse the replay. However, In the spirit of Gracious Professionalism, the alliance that was not affected by the fault should say that the fault made no difference in the outcome and graciously deny the replay.

If both alliances are affected, The Head Ref should make the call.