Yellow card / Red card usage at 2004 IRI

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

My only problem with the yellow card, is that it forces the ref into the red card call the second time, even if the action wouldnt normally be a DQ. If it occurs a second time, and the second time it could very well be an accident, or it is far less severe of an infringment, if you dont call it it looks like favoritism or not being strong enough to DQ.

Sean has a good point here. The solution to this is the fact that a "yellow card" is given for only very serious offenses that are on the edge of being DQ situations. It should be meant to be a smidge bit away from being a DQ. The refs are ALMOST giving a DQ to a team, but they are not 100% sure about it, so they give a yellow card. That is the reason I said this above:

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

...
Yellow Card
- a yellow card is a serious, public warning that this team ALMOST received a disqualification (DQ)
...

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Originally Posted by suneel112

But the Refs at IRI were great in that respect. They called penalties if they had the slightest doubt, which is what should be done. Hats off to them.

We appreciate the kind words, but we really only call the penalties if we are sure about the call. There were many times where the refs were not sure (they had a doubt) about something, and therefore we did not call it. This happened with tipping, assisting a goal, and ball corral encroachment.

An example:
"one of those balls might have gone in the goal after touching their robot."
"are you sure?"
"no, it was close, I am not sure"
"then we're not going to call it"

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As for the yellow card, I like the fact that it puts the onus back on the team. There is no penalty for having a yellow card, but the team knows that if they do something similar in a forthcoming match, they will get DQ'ed.

A detail that needs to be ironed out is the quantity of yellow cards. Karthik brings up a good point above, with the idea of getting cleared yellow card status for the elimination rounds. I would vote against the idea, for 2 reasons:

1. getting cleared status for the finals lessens the severity of a yellow card
2. while there is no penalty for a yellow card in a qualification match, it WILL make an impact on the decisions of a picking team: "should we pick team A or B? they both are good... but team B got a yellow card... hmmmm"

Andy B.