Thanks to everyone who took the time to send me their opinions on the scenario I sent yesterday.
The results were.... Turnover: 30 No Turnover: 10 This is interesting and I believe proves my point that we need a clarification. It is not acceptable that approximately one quarter of players are interpreting the rules differently to others. It would be patronising to claim that people dont know the rules or dont understand the rules, yet obviously the rules are being interpreted diffierently by different people. It seems that some people (like me) interpret rule 1 (Spirit) as most important followed by the other rules. Other people alternatively are taking the view that the letter of the rules closest to describing the situation (rule 17, where play stops when a call is made) should take precedence, and presumably Spirit is only there to adjudicate in situations that the other rules dont cover. In this particular scenario I think it is clear that Spirit would dictate that the situation is a turnover. The most common 2 arguments made for it not being a turnover was that "its difficult to tell what affected play" and "its fairer and it works out in the end over the course of a season". While I have some sympathy with the latter view it seems to me an admission that Spirit doesn't work, and an acceptance that players will not play with Spirit of the Game. Call me old school, but that is a shocking inditement on our sport, if we have now reached the stage where players dont believe in Spirit or dont believe that our sport can be run on the principle of Spirit. On a related note - did anyone else think the recent situation with Paul Collingwood and the England/NZ run out was ironic? For those that don't know, a New Zealand batsman was going for a run, collided with the bowler and fell over. He was then easily run out as a result of the collision. Paul Collingwood (the England captain) was asked by the umpire if he was sure that he wanted to appeal for the wicket, and when he said yes the umpire had no option other than to give him out. This caused a massive incident at the time and most commentators derided Collingwood for not acting in "the spirit of the game of cricket". They felt that even though he was permitted to do so by the letter of the law of cricket, it was against the spirit of how cricket was played. Collingwood himself later apologised and said that he regretted his decision and felt it was the wrong one. One Test Match Special commentator described the incident as "Shameful". Why is this ironic? Well, in a sport that is tainted by professionalism, money etc. someone who is playing by the letter of the law is described as "Shameful" and not playing in the "spirit of the game", whereas in our sport where we supposedly enshrine the importance of Spirit of the game above all else, many players would claim that that very same decision was the right course of action. I think it is very likely that in the current climate of Ultimate, were a similar situation to occur, Collingwood's decision would be applauded rather than derided, as a significant number of ultimate players believe that playing to the minutiae of the rules is more important than playing to such an ephemeral or difficult concept as Spirit. That is why I launching this attempt to bring Spirit back to the forefront of people's minds. So my question is - where do we go from here? How do we decide natioanlly which interpretation we should be taking? Does the UKUA have a a view? Cheers to everyone for taking part in this debate. Dave __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
