Hello Vex Forums, today my team and I were competing in a semi finals match when we were disqualified. 5062A and 536G were on the field and at around 6:13:43 into the live stream 536G supposedly tipped over 4410C. When I asked a referee when the match was completed for an exact reason for the disqualification he told me that 536G was entangled with 4410C and raised 536G's arm causing 4410C to tip. About 2 minutes after we were told we were disqualified we tried to show the head referee what you can see in the link above. Understandably they refused to look at the footage.
From what I saw in the clip 4410C ran up a cone on to the side rollers of 536G and then continued to drive forward until they were past the point of no return and tipped. Yes, I understand 536G was playing aggressive this match and drove forward as they were tipping, which was a mistake. But if you look closely, and play the video at x.25 speed, at the exact moment when 4410C's bot tips you can see that 536G's arm doesn't move. If he was raising his arm with an intent to tip them you would've seen his arm move up as the bot starts to fall. However his side rollers stay flat to the ground.
I am making this forum discussion not because I plan to hold a grudge on either the teams on the blue alliance or the referees, but because I am curious about what the community thinks. So please reply with what your opinion is on what happened, and if this is an unjust disqualification or not. Thanks!
First of all… split second decision is never going to be easy for the referees. And we can never expect any referees to make the correct calls every time… especially when video playback is not acceptable.
It is almost like soccer… some times the attacker gets the penalty call and some times the attacker will be booked for simulation.
As for this game… 536G did not raise its lift. But it looks like the robot inched forward when 4410C was on the verge of tipping - and small nudge might be enough to cause 4410C to tip.
The correct action by 536G should be to reverse instead of going forward.
So I am not totally surprise by the DQ call.
Personally I am not against aggressive play… there is a place for this approach and also a limit to it as well.
But I certainly hope it is a good learning moment for all teams that choose to play aggressively - live by the sword, die by the sword.
As long as you choose to play aggressively (especially over aggression) or total defensive play, then be prepared to be called out.
EDIT: 8059J was DQ during SingVex as well. But no regrets and no complains from my side… we kinda knew it will happened 
EDIT 2: Are you speaking up on behalf of 536G or you are just curious on how referees make their calls?
I think the DQ call was reasonable. If you’re playing aggressive defense, then occasionally there will be on-field incidents like this that you might have caused. If the refs can’t tell, the benefit of the doubt is supposed to go to the offense, not the defense. I think it would be impossible to tell exactly what happened when watching this at full speed from the referee’s point of view. (The camera that recorded this had a different vantage point than did the referee.) Therefore, this is a reasonable call.
Beyond that, I think it’s safe to say that 4410c wouldn’t have tipped if 536G had not pushed cones into the mobile goal and driven forward when 4410C was trying to get to the mobile goal. So again, reasonable basis for a DQ call.
We also don’t know what else the referees saw during the day that might have informed their DQ decision. I doubt that this match was the first time 536G played rough and tumble defense. We don’t know whether or how many times 536G was warned about aggressive defense, for instance. Perhaps not at all. But even in that case, the referees may have given them a more critical look if they noticed the team had been on tough defense during the earlier parts of the tournament.
I am not against aggressive defense. But sometimes you’re going to get called for it, and it might not always be justified. In my opinion, it was in this case.
I have to say… I’m totally with 536G on this one. I know they kinda got some hate with their spider intake and hampster drive thread, but they were the champions of the last two tournaments which are the two biggest tournaments of the year except for the state tournament in their state, and broke the world highest scoring in a single match, something I doubt many posters on the forums can say. That speaks to their strength and it just goes to show that they must be doing something right. 202 and 5062 had lots of other good choices but picked them, it’s not a coincidence that they were picked by the first seed twice in a row now, their impact on a match is much more than the scoring that they can do. Their defense even stopped 202 from going undefeated at their last tournament, a team that is at least top 10 in the world, if not top 5 right now.
As for the call, Pepsi stated clearly that the ref’s reason for DQ was that 536G raised their lift and intentionally tipped their opponent, which is undoubtedly wrong as we can see in the video. From my perspective, 4410c plowed full speed into a bunch of cones with a very fast drive and straight up drove over 536G’s hampster drive’s left chassis. When they see themselves starting to tip, they even lifted up their double reverse 4 bar all the way to give themselves that extra momentum and shift up their center of gravity to completely fall over. If nothing else, this is a violation of the rule that states that you can’t intentionally try to make your opponents break a rule. Also, the refs ruled that it was match affecting, but a little hindsight bias in the following matches saw the 4410 alliance lose the series to the two 5062s anyways even though being ahead a game through the DQ. So them being functional would add little difference to the outcome of the match. I’m not saying that the refs were doing a bad job, I understand sometimes tough decisions has to be made in a short amount of time. What I don’t get is why Vex removed video review to judge a DQ, the entire tournament was being streamed live on YouTube, a simple backtrack on the stream could have given them the footage that they need to make the correct call, even if it was still a DQ it would be for the right reason then.
Gosh… no… it is never about whatever hate (if any) they are getting.
There is nothing that they did that deserve any hate.
The OP himself is aware that it was a mistake by 536G that might get a DQ call.
Maybe the referee had a slipped of tongue or mentioned the reason wrongly (with so many matches for him to remember)… but OP’s question is - is it unjust DQ? And so far @kypyro and I feel that it is not unjust. But yes… there will be times that the team might get away with it, but dont be surpised if a DQ is called as well.
PS… the video did gave me a gd look at the roller intake… but I shall not comment on it…
FYI… RECF did not removed video review. This rule has always been around.
Maybe you should do a bit of research into this topic as well… there were quite a fair bit of discussions many seasons ago and RECF did explained why they choose not to use video review.
I was there and to me it looked exactly as it does in the video… in my opinion rule G12 doesn’t even come into play here because 536G wasnt doing anything illegal seeing as he didn’t lift up to try to tip 4410C, he just drove into their mobile goal and they tipped themselves
Also from what I heard the head ref didnt see the tip… I could be wrong though thats just what i heard
As I said - some times you will get the DQ call and some times you don’t.
But is there justification for a DQ? Yes… there is. As I mentioned (and the OP admitted as well), 536G should reverse out of the situation, instead, it moved forward.
I would not be surprise if the referee saw it as an intentional move. And of course, we have no idea if the team had been given any prior warning before this match.
This is true and I am not disagreeing with it, however 536G driving forwards didnt tip 4410C… but we dont know the refs rational behind the decision so i guess its a mystery
Sorry I didn’t know that, I wasn’t around yet many seasons ago. I guess the RECF must have their reasons… But the absence of it did make the DQ for the wrong reason. 536G had no time to react to the sudden backward momentum that 4410 created by lifting up their lift, by the time they backed off 4410 was already on the ground.
From the video - 536G did move forward. It is pretty obvious at the 6:13.44 to 6:13.46 mark.
In fact, the problem is that the robot had a momentary stop, before moving forward again. So again, as I mentioned, I wouldn’t be surprise if it was seen as intentional.
EDIT: for more specific time frame
Although they moved forwards from what i saw at the tournament and in the video ir didnt cause 4410C to tip… but like i said they could have had a different reason or been warned before
Well… from the video, it is obvious that 4410C drove up onto 536G roller. But if 536G didn’t move forward, they may not have tipped.
But of course, nobody can be very sure of what might have happened.
But from the point of view of the referee, the sequence of events might be - 4410C went on top of the roller —> 536G moves forward —> 4410C tipped
Hope you get what i am trying to drive at - it is not unreasonable for the referee to interpret it as a DQ
I can agree with that… the video quality isn’t quite good enough to tell what exactly happened… but after watching the video multiple times it looks to me as if 4410C was already tipped before 536G moved forwards… just my opinion I see why it could have gone either way though.
Exactly… it could have gone either way.
And when you factor in split-second decision and the benefit of doubt to be given to the offensive teams plus If 536G could had been warned before (which we wouldn’t know), then I am really not surprise by the decision.
I am probably one of the most sympathetic to the defensive play as any. That said, this is not a call I would argue. If it had gone the other way, it is a call I would not have argued. These calls are made in real time. Robots should be made to withstand interaction. Offensive robots will be given the benefit of the doubt. It could have gone either way.
As was noted earlier in the comments, the best thing to do is back off if it you are only being defensive and it looks like a robot with which you are interacting might tip.
I think it could be argued either way, DQ or no DQ. In situations like these it is really hard on making calls and one of the alliances wont like the outcome. I would think that the refs would have to determine if this was actually match effecting and that comes down to opinion since it was a higher level match. Generally though solely defensive strategies are not favored in the selection of a DQ, in fact it even says in the rules that its not in the Ethos of the Vex competition. Im not surprised it was a DQ but i also think that both sides have an argument because how it played out.
My answer was based solely on the information in the @Pepsi post and from watching the video linked there. I didn’t realize this was in any way related to those posts.
The refs could have told them many other things as well. We don’t know since we weren’t involved in the conversation. My experience is that the teams I support and help tend to focus on the parts where they think the ref got it wrong and to not really remember the parts where perhaps the ref had a point. I am not saying that’s what happened here, just that it has happened with teams I mentor/coach. It could have happened here.
As to it being “undoubtedly wrong as we can see in the video”, four points:
- What can be seen in a video after the fact is irrelevant to a ref making a call. That’s just how the rules of our game work.
- The video is taken from a perspective not available to the referees during the match, and
- We can slow the video down and study it in detail. The refs have to make the call on what they believe at the time from what they’re able to see; further:
- If the refs are unable to definitively determine who caused a negative outcome from an on-field encounter between an offensive and a defensive competitor, they are to grant the benefit of the doubt to the offensive competitor.
Given that, this is a reasonable call.
The subject of this thread is “Unjust Disqualification?”
To answer something like that, the usual metric is “could a reasonable person in the same situation with the same information make the same call?” I think the answer is “yes” and therefore this was not an “Unjust Disqualification.”
I’m not trying to answer the question “Was ultimate cosmic justice served with this disqualification?” Because questions like that are unanswerable.
I’m also not answering the question “Is this the call the referees will make every time?” Overall, that’s an unimportant question.
Good points, if I was the ref in that situation I would have a hard time deciding on what the verdict would be and a DQ would be reasonable. The OP’s intention of this thread is to ask if the call was unjust, and I feel there can’t be a clear yes/no answer to that question, there are compelling arguments for both. But for the record, the OP, John B, and I were all there at the competition in person and we seem to be leaning towards the call being unjust. Doesn’t mean it actually is though, honestly if they didn’t get DQed we could also be talking about if they should be DQed.
oh no, it’s because of the s p i d e r i n t a k e