And One Rule to Ring Them

It is fantastic that both the AFDA and WFDF have recently made announcements about activities to improve the rule knowledge of players.

All Ultimate players are referees.

Imagine if you were watching some other sport, and the referee didn't know the rules or got them wrong. There'd be a furor!

AFDA have recently appointed a National Rules Officer, the wonderful Jo Creswell, who's role is to promote rule knowledge amongst players. AFDA also hosted a Rules Forum at Nationals 2010 in Adelaide, which led to lively discussion. Check out Jo's introductory post.

Meanwhile, our own Rueben Berg, the very busy Chair of the WFDF Ultimate Rules Committee, recently launched the WFDF Rules Website. Go and have a look.

Is there someone reading this who'd nominate themselves or someone else as the BUDA or even just BPL Rules Promotion Officer? We here at the stately mansion would love to see a weekly email highlighting some rule or other, either drawn from AFDA and WFDF's work, or in response to a local query along the lines of "in a game at League the other night ..." We would faithfully reproduce your emails here on the Brisbane Ultimate Blog!

And some philosophy for you - the best way to understand the rules is to ask questions about them. To paraphrase Professor Sumner-Miller, to ask "Why is (this rule) so?" is the best way to learn and be able to explain to others.

Explaining a rule your own way, and hearing a rule explained differently by different people, helps you to grasp the platonic concept of the rule. So in the case of "what happens if the disc is thrown after a pick is called", my answer is "The moment when someone calls 'pick', play officially stops. Someone saying "Pick" is the same as a referee blowing a whistle in other sports. Anything that happens after that is irrelevant. The grief we have is that not everyone hears the call, and sometimes throws are thrown. Maybe we should all have whistles? But that doesn't change the fact that play has stopped."