Charlie Eisenhood gives his take on what’s in store in 2017 and interviews WFDF rules guru Reuben Berg about the recent update to the ruleset.
Deep Look: 2017 Outlook, WFDF Rule Changes
Music: Fake Love – Drake
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Originally published at: https://ultiworld.com/2017/01/05/deep-look-2017-outlook-wfdf-rule-changes/
Charlie, here’s a good example of the philosophical difference in WFDF vs USAU around contact after the play.
The contact is arguably not dangerous, a very glancing blow really - but it wouldn’t take much to make it extremely dangerous. If Desmond is a few inches right it’s a serious collision. WFDF’s approach is to say that we don’t want any dangerous play, by accident or otherwise, so the rules are written to discourage this kind of bid from ever happening. Under WFDF rules, we’re saying that EVEN IF the defender gets this disc first, and the contact ends up being fairly minimal, then this sort of bid where the opponent clearly has position is not an acceptable way to get a turnover. You must get it totally clean, or your bid was too risky - even if contact wasn’t that severe. Your first thought when bidding should be ‘Is it safe?’, not ‘Can I get the disc first?’. I get that some people want to play a sport where they all crash into each other, and they expect everyone to toughen up and deal with contact - but that’s emphatically not how the rules are written, nor the intent of those writing the rules.
I’ve talked about it before too: https://understandingultimate.wordpress.com/2016/07/28/dangerous-bids-usau-vs-wfdf-rules/
There’s an additional wrinkle between USAU and WFDF too - in this situation, if Desmond had just leapt out of the way, she would be entitled to call dangerous play on a player bidding into her established position. Under USAU, she can only call dangerous play if there is actual contact. This is actually a really good example of why WFDF is the way it is - Desmond is clearly stationary and owns that space, and if she fears for her safety she ought to be able to get out of the way without needing to make sure some contact happens. She owns that space, and this isn’t a game of bravery where we’re trying to reward whoever is most reckless or most prepared to accept contact. She shouldn’t be touched in this situation, period.
Thanks for the insight, Benji. I’m torn on this subject. While I think that overly physical play and bad bids have become a problem in North American competition, I am not convinced that the WFDF rules are the best approach either (though safety is clearly emphasized under WFDF ruleset).
I think this is a challenging position to defend: if a play could perhaps have been dangerous or have impacted the play in another theoretical universe, then it’s a foul. [For what it’s worth, I think the play you showed is a foul because the contact affected the play. Simple.]
In sports, you are going to have moments where if something had gone just slightly differently, it would have been a foul, or a missed shot, or a buzzer beater. Penalizing the possibility of a dangerous play or foul on a similar, but different bid seems really strange to me.
I guess I take a middle ground here: some incidental contact has to be acceptable. If you screw up, then you are penalized. If you make an insane bending-around-the-receiver bid, get the block, but brush them with your hip? Sweet play, your disc.
Thanks Charlie. I’m not sure I was quite clear enough really - my bad.
If the contact is REALLY minimal, then it’s not a foul under either ruleset. The difference is when contact is meaningful but not dangerous. For example, let’s imagine that the play doesn’t quite qualify as dangerous but is enough to knock the player off balance or otherwise inconvenience them from getting on D immediately. It’s a foul under both USAU and WFDF, as play has been affected by the contact. But under USAU, the block stands - we stop play, allow the fouled player to regain position, but we don’t give them the disc back. Under WFDF, we’re basically saying - that’s too close for comfort, and we want to discourage it. Meaningful contact related to the block means you shouldn’t have been bidding in the first place, and so your block doesn’t stand.
Really, it’s about following through on this idea, which is in both rulesets in some form: “It is the responsibility of all players to avoid contact in every way possible.”
If I can’t get a block without contact, and I do it anyway - causing contact - then that block shouldn’t stand. Otherwise the rule above is not being properly followed. We can’t reward someone for breaching the ‘avoid contact’ rule.
It’s easy to think that WFDF are punishing someone for making contact, but really it’s not that - that contact should not have happened, and if it hadn’t happened then the correct outcome is that they wouldn’t have got the block. It’s not a punishment, just the correct outcome. Under USAU, they are rewarded for a bid that resulted in contact.
I don’t understand why the gender ratio rule B exists or how this is considered an improvement on the current rules. It does nothing to gender equality (as opposed to rule A) and now puts the advantage into the hands of a the team that wins the flip rather than the team that is behind.
An additional problem is the change of which endzone decides after half time. Like that, in games with an unequal number of points in both the first and second half, you create a situation where one team gets the decision twice more than the other team. Is this a mistake in the rules or has that been done on purpose?