Interesting rule calls from the Detroit District

[Don Wright]

I just wanted to post a couple of things I found interesting that happened at the Detroit District this past weekend.

This is in no means criticism of the refs or any team's gameplay. Just some things that might affect the way you play for the rest of the season so to make you aware...

First...since I've received several PM's concerning our "illegal" mini-bot deployment mechanism and what we "tried to get away with this year"... Here's a quick video of it deploying at the end of one of our matches. The item in question was since that the 4-bar is slightly traveling in an upward motion when the mini-bot hits the pole, it is contributing to the upward motion of the mini-bot which is illegal... You be the judge, but we promptly removed it after it was brought to our attention:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5hmtndWAs8

In this match, we no longer have a mini-bot so we are scoring tubes until the end of the match. We received a red card for this match because the last tube we picked up touched the tower base as we picked it up and it was during the end game. Right or wrong...you decide... Just be careful around those towers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YQoHIFCLWs

The final one is one I really still have a question about. In this match, excellent defense was being played on us and when we tried to go for the tower, they got between us and the tower and we pushed them into the base of the tower. We then backed off slightly, they didn't move, and then pushed them again... You can see the video (although there are some refs in the way, you still can get the point)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP5sGFJJv-M

My question is this...is this pinning (you can see we are getting a countdown for pinning)? Should this be a red card for the red team for contact with the tower in the end game (regardless of pinning)? If not, is it a viable defense now to just "get pinned" between a team wanting to deploy and their tower?

Again, no fault on the refs as I feel this is a slightly gray area that needs clarification...

Thoughts?