08/27/2023
[About 3 years ago, Mark invited me to co-admin this page with him. In that time, I haven't posted near as much as I would have liked to, but hopefully that will change in 2024. Anyways, I have already briefly discussed the topic of this post with him and while I suspect it is likely he will agree with some of the opinions I'm going to express, it is possible he may disagree with some of them as well. - Arthur]
The image below is from a 1984 Table Talk and discusses the Goalie War rules at the time on Dynamo. My best recollection is that the rules had not changed significantly from the TS era. I'd like to draw special attention to the fundamental principle of Goalie Wars which is in all caps on the upper right half of the article. With that in mind, I'm going to present a few scenarios, what the "old" and ITSF rules say should happen and which one(s) I agree with. Scenarios 1, 2, & 3 are about when the ball hits a middle rod. As Mark suggested, the optimal solution would be to have the middle rods removed for Goalie Wars, but not all Tournament Directors are willing to slow down the tourney that way, hence my mention of them. Scenarios 4 & 5 are about ball off the table.
Scenario 1) Yellow has possession, hits the ball which makes contact with a middle rod and enters Black's goal. The old and ITSF rules both indicate that Yellow gets a point and I concur.
Scenario 2) Yellow has possession, hits the ball which makes contact with a middle rod back into Yellow's goal. The old and ITSF rules both indicate that Black gets a point and I concur.
Scenario 3) Yellow has possession, hits the ball which makes contact with a middle rod back into Yellow's area. The old rules indicate that Black gets possession of the ball, whereas (as Dan Barber has pointed out to me), the ITSF rules indicate that Yellow retains possession of the ball. I am absolutely convinced that, for this scenario, the ITSF rules are flawed, because they are wholly inconsistent with the fundamental principle. Given that Goalie Wars at the upcoming Tornado Championships is not an ITSF qualifying event, as IFP Head Official, I am issuing a tentative ruling in favor of the old rules. In the event that I am overruled by both Donald Wilson and Mary Moore, I will issue a retraction. Also, should Goalie Wars ever become an ITSF qualifying event, we will reevaluate.
Scenario 4) Yellow has possession, hits the ball, which causes the ball to go off the table without ever entering Black's zone. I'm not entirely sure how the old rules handle this, but it's clear the ITSF rules indicate that Black gets possession of the ball and I concur.
Scenario 5) Yellow has possession, hits the ball, it enters Black's zone, and subsequently goes off the table. The old rules indicate that the ball goes to the player who was last scored upon. The ITSF rules indicate that Black gets possession of the ball. Between the two, I think the ITSF rules are fairer and in order not to confuse the players, that's what we'll go with. However, I'm not completely enamored with how the ITSF rules handle this scenario. In my opinion, the fairest way to handle ball off the table is to have an alternating possession arrow, similar to college basketball. Let me emphasize that this is *not* a ruling, but rather a proposed modification to the existing ITSF rules.
