Hey, don't want to bore everyone, so the jist of the email below is that you can't use common sense when everyone has different interpretations of how the game is supposed to be played, and having well defined rules doesn't mean people will suddenly become badly spirited or miss the point about what the rules are trying to achieve.
One could indeed argue that it is better to play a sport where vague rules do not matter as players can decide on fair outcomes themselves using SOTG, rather than play a sport where the rules are strictly defined and so it's more often a question of who on the pitch knows the rules and how they should be implemented, but there are problems with this; For a start, there are differing interpretations of spirit. There always have been and always will be - the word represents a concept which is unique to each of us, so when you're lying on the floor and I start stalling you, you may think I have poor spirit to not allow you grace, but conversely I may think you have poor spirit if you expect what is essentially an advantage outside the rules as reward for making a tough grab. I have no problem with people playing within the fair rules - even if I hold the disc out for someone to check it in, I respect them if they just start stalling me, because they know the rules and may believe it is to their disadvantage to tap the disc in as I'm suggesting. Playing with spirit, in my mind, means always trying my best to adhere to the rules, always being honest about what I believe happened in a play, and always settling disputes with the most likely outcome if there had been no infraction of the rules. Adopting a more defined ruleset won't automatically turn everyone into rule-picking weirdos with no respect for the spirit. SOTG still remains a crucial element of the sport, and no matter how defined the rules are, the game can never be played fairly unless the teams remain spirited... I don't think anyone here would disagree so I won't dwell on this point. The problem is that it's hard not to see someone as badly spirited if they violate the rules, intentionally or otherwise, and it's much easier to remain spirited if both parties have a clear understanding of the rules and so their discussions can remain centered around what happened in the play. When the rules are vague and subject to interpretation as they are, discussions based on interpretations are rife, and it's easy to get upset when people happen to 'interpret' the rules to their advantage. As with the lying-on-the-floor example, honest misinterpretations of the rules can lead to players getting upset too. Everything would be much more simple, and it would be much easier to keep discussions short whilst using common sense and maintaining the SOTG, if we had a well defined set of rules that adequately covered the outcomes of situations that occur in every game (such as marking up after a pick - I'll just throw that one in there...). Felix http://www.seultimate.org/rules/ __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp
