Pushing under the Low Goal is a way for simpler or starter robots to score. All the prior games I’m familiar with have had a way for push-bots to score.
It would be worth the time to discuss the events definition of the front of the Low Goal with the referees. This can be critical to the understanding of “<SG9> Robots may not enter (i.e. break the plane) of any Goal” and the definition of “Scored … 1. A Scoring object is touching a Low Goal”. These were issues at our last competition.
Another issue occurred when the goal pipe became dislodged while attempting to push a ball under it. Our robot was DQ’d for damaging the field. I wouldn’t have expected the pipe to come out of the pipe goal brackets by the forces generated by a Vex robot. The field monitor was mounted on a post at the mid-point of the field wall between the goals. It appeared to me that the weight of the monitor was tilting the top of the wall to the outside; contributing to the disengagement of the pipe. We placed a chair against the monitor to help keep the wall vertical and the pipe engaged.
The senior official at the last event said that he didn’t like “pushing under” and said that higher-ups also would like to discourage it.
Referees should only be disqualifying teams for damaging the field in extreme situations. Without seeing the incident in question it is impossible for us to determine whether the DQ was warranted.
I’m not sure if I count as a “higher up”, however I can say that pushing Balls under the Low Goal is an encouraged and viable strategy. If the GDC didn’t like it, we never would have made it impossible or written a rule to make it illegal.