June 5, 2014 by Charlie Eisenhood in Livewire
Ultiworld columnist Benji Heywood may have had a bit of influence over the new WFDF game advisors. Take a look at this post from last summer on his blog, Understanding Ultimate.
He wrote:
Imagine an observer (facilitator? advisor?) who:
- Could cap discussions after a time limit, and send the disc back if needed
- Knew all the rules well
- Spoke both relevant languages
- Communicated the call to spectators
- Offered an impartial ruling on what happened
- But could NOT force the players to accept his or her ruling
There’s a lot more where that came from, but he called it! This is basically the exact concept that the WFDF task force decided upon.
Heywood is a big proponent of self-officiation and made this (apparently persuasive) case for an impartial third party without significant powers to make rulings.
I am very curious to see how it works. I do think some of the changes made — like moving from a 60 second time limit on call disputes down to 45 seconds — don’t really solve the problem of endless bickering in tight matches. And how exactly is a game advisor going to work? I’m afraid we’ll see something like this:
Player 1: “Foul! You hit my hand as I went for the catch.”
Player 2: “No, I didn’t. You dropped it before the contact.”
Player 1: “Game advisor what did you see?”
Game Advisor: “I saw the disc pop out of your hand before the contact.”
Player 1: “That’s not what happened!”
*bicker bicker send it back*
I could surely be wrong, and perhaps just the presence of a third party will clean up the game. But with no teeth to enforce calls and vague language about what exactly the game advisor will be able to do in a situation where they need to discipline a player, I’m not convinced this is enough, yet.
But it is a start. And Club Worlds will give us a good look at whether it’s effective or not.
