I have an initial, easily addressible concern: I don’t like delivering the normal penalty cue before the “undo”. That doesn’t happen with cedes (which have no communication pre-cede) or yields (which have a warning pre-yield, distinct from the penalty cue). Having a normal penalty cue which can be undone seems likely to create significant confusion, particularly with the NSOs. Without a second verbal cue to announce that the penalty “stuck” (ie wasnt yielded), there would be too many people pausing to see whether it was a real penalty this time.
The simplest fix would be to have a warning after the initial impact and before the “undo” window, which would be clearly distinct from the verbal cue denoting the penalty. Something like “Black 23, Yield”, which would be followed by “[tweet] Black 23, Forearms [swoop]” if they failed to yield the illegal advantage.
Now, my questions/concerns with the heart of the proposal.
- There are many ways a block can have impact that aren’t gaining superior position, and I’m not sure how many of them can be undone. Examples include knocking someone down, knocking someone OOBs, and letting your Jammer get by.
- There’s also the problem of “undoing” secondary consequences of impact. For example, if the Jammer hits my Multiplayer Block, is stopped, and jukes around to another gap, I can’t just let them by…the Jammer is already at a different place on the track in a different situation.
- There is also the problem of bandwidth. A warning followed by tracking a potential yield occupies an official for a second or two in which it is difficult or impossible to track most other things. Some of the illegal contact you are describing is extremely common, and if impact/warn/yield becomes as common as cut/ceding currently is, the officials might spend a lot of their time and energy warning and monitoring these yields.
I will point out that Yielding a False Start already has many of these problems. Skaters often erroneously report to the box; if they don’t, an official must spend several of the most important seconds in a Jam watching a skater standing there. The only reason this isn’t a bigger problem is that False Starts are relatively rare.
That said, I’m certainly not trying to dismiss your idea entirely! I think allowing Cuts to be ceded was one of the best improvements to the quality of derby, and I am excited for any innovation in reducing the number of needless penalties.
As a counter-suggestion, I would prefer something closer to Ceding than to Yielding; that is, with no communication of any form. If a skater commits a penalty with impact that can be undone, there would be a window in which they could Cede that impact as long as their first derby action was to completely undo the impact. A successful Cede would lead to no penalty.
This has a few advantages over a framework with a warning.
- Less communication creates less confusion and less delay. Instead of monitoring how the skater reacts to the warning (which could be several beats after the action), the official just has to monitor how they react to the action itself.
- It creates more space for the official to monitor the impact and whether it was undone. They wouldn’t have to decide whether it was undo-able first; they could watch play unfold and make a call about whether it was successfully undone.
I would argue that this isn’t that different than how some officials already call penalties. I know of many refs (myself included) who will No Call a penalty if there is a brief superior position that is immediately undone. For example, if Jammer pulls themselves around an opponent for an instant but then immediately goes Out of Bounds, then I would argue that there was no Impact and thus should not be a penalty (assuming they didn’t get a point or something).
Formalizing a change like this and creating language around it would still be useful for education and consistency purposes. I would love to be able to say “The Jammer grabbed the Blocker and pulled themselves around, but immediately Ceded the advantage by going Out of Bounds and running back.”
Yielding: “A Skater who is required to Yield must allow any Skaters in their vicinity to assume a superior Relative Position. A Skater who allows a reasonable time for this to occur has Yielded, whether or not any Skaters took advantage of the opportunity.”
With reference to the rules change that allowed skaters to cede illegal position, I’d like to propose the following penalties be ‘‘yield-able’
Red pivot and red blocker commit a multiplayer against yellow jammer. Penalty is called, both blockers must momentarily yield (as they would for a false start).
