Yellow card / Red card usage at 2004 IRI

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally Posted by Matt Adams

I'll admit that this will take swift action by one ref or nearly instant voting, but nevertheless, I think that this sort of penalty should be used more often in gameplay.

The one real problem with that is, it's really tough to make a disable call that quickly. I had to make a couple disable calls at IRI on robots that were outside the playing field and/or damaging the field barriers. Both are fairly straightforward calls, but I was still hesitant and unsure what to do, because disabling a robot can have such a dramatic effect on a match. If it's that tough to quickly call a disable on a robot that has fallen over and gotten entangled, and essentially out of the match, imagine how tough it would be to disable a robot on what is essentially a judgement call by one person.

I think if FIRST were to implement a disable penalty system like you suggest, the rules for disables would need to be extremely well-defined. If you rely on one lone referee to make a snap judgement, you open up the whole situation for argument. And, even with well-defined disable rules, you will still have plenty of controversy every time a robot gets shut off. No matter how defined the rules are, teams will always complain and say the rule does not apply in that situation.

The current system of DQs and the IRI card system aren't perfect, but it's a lot more reliable than instant disables, IMHO. Having had to make calls with far less gravity and ambiguity, I don't think it's a better solution. If it could be made completely objective and defined, it might work, but any time you leave total decision power to one person in the heat of the moment, you're asking for trouble.