Rule H06 reads “COACHES may not touch GEARS or FUEL unless for safety purposes”.
Reading this rule, it does not appear to be limited to just during the match. If this were true, any coaches touching gears or fuel during match setup would be violating this rule.
However, I have seen countless drive team coaches position gears in their robots, never receiving a foul. Am I just reading the rule wrong?
This rule and may others exists to keep coaches from directly interacting with game play. Before the match, coaches can touch game pieces.
Fouls can be given for any violation within an ARENA, whether it’s during a match or not. Hence the reason for giving yellow cards for leaving an airship after a match when a volunteer said to leave the airship under purple lights.
Usually <GXX> violations are predicated with “during a match”. Most of the H-section rules apply to situations that only occur during a match (like H07).
Seems like it can be argued as completely ambiguous to a ref so no fouls are given. The argument would be “we’re allowed in an out of our zones before and after the match”, etc etc.
In order to avoid wordiness, during game, or at any time, is assumed by the context. H08 is another example of a rule that only needs to be enforced during the game. Most non-safety rules can be assumed to be only during a match.
While this is specifically for H01, the logic applies to H06