The refs should know the rules, shouldn't they?

[Madison]

Okay...here's the situation. . . .keep in mind, there's nothing personal against the teams involved...I quite like them both.

During the quarterfinals, we (810) were in an alliance competing against 340, 639, and another robot who's number escapes me.

The first round of three, we won. The opposing alliance was 340 and 639.
The second match, we lost, but the opposing alliance played with 340 and 639 again! I was pretty sure this was wrong.

Now, rule T11, reads, "Each team in an alliance must compete in at least one match in each series."

My interpretation of this rule went like this -

You're only assured two rounds. There exists every possibility that a team can win in two rounds. As such, to satisfy the wording of the above rule, a team must be switched out of both alliances.

I brought this to the head refs attention, and received the runaround, basically. They reasoned that, if the second alliance lost again, they would've been in violation of rule T11, and be DQ'd. But, it was academic, because they'd already lost. If they won, there would be three matches, and they'd be forced to switch out a robot in the third match.

I argued that this, while fair to the 340/639 alliance, may put our alliance at a disadvantage. It does have an affect on our strategy. Particularly, though we won the first match against that pair, it was very close. Close enough, in fact, that we lost the second match. That may not have happened were they to switch out a robot as we were required to.

After about ten minutes of rather unsuccessfully trying to get the ref. to see my point, I was, essentially, dismissed. In essence, I was told that there was a change in one of the team updates. I didn't have the updates handy, so I couldn't produce this change. As such, my concern was promptly ignored.

Now, the main I have. . . I came home tonight and double checked for this update, just to see if I was mistaken about my inclination.

The update reads, "The following text is added after the first sentence of T11: 'Therefore, the team that did not compete in the first match of a series should compete in the second match of the series.'"

So, not only was my interpretation correct, but it was clarified in a team update.

Why, then, was I given the runaround, and ultimately told that the ruling was something totally contradictory to what it really is?

I understand they're human, and they make mistakes. I think I made a good case for myself, and I think that the whole situation was handled poorly. In the end, it became irrelevant as we won the third match. But, I thought that this may happen again, and so I wanted to bring it up here.