Pre-stalls and delay of game

So what's new about this?

One small change is that you always have to announce "disc in" before beginning a stall count early due to a pre-stall or a delay of game.

Next, the easy part, the pre-stall. Only two things have changed:
1. the name. It is not called "delay of game" anymore, it is the pre-stall. This change was made to keep the two concepts apart.
2. You don't have to initiate the pre-stall by some words anymore. It is enough to loudly say "(twenty)...ten...five...disc in stalling one...". It is getting more and more common (at least in elite play) that pre-stalls are counted, go ahead, do it yourself!

And now to the trickier issue, delay of game. The relevant rules here are

XIX.B. It is the responsibility of all players to avoid any delay when starting, restarting, or continuing play. This includes standing over the disc or taking more time than reasonably necessary to put the disc into play.

and

XIII.A.5. If an offensive player unnecessarily delays putting the disc into play in violation of rule XIX.B, a defender within three meters of the spot the disc is to be put into play may issue a delay of game warning instead of calling a violation. If the behavior in violation of rule XIX.B is not immediately stopped, the marker may initiate and continue a stall count, regardless of the actions of the offense. In order to invoke this rule, after announcing “delay of game,” the marker must give the offense two seconds to react to the warning, and then announce “disc in” before initiating the stall count.

XIX.B tells you that you should not delay the game, and gives a couple explicit scenarios (but there are other situations this rule applies!):
a) don't stand over the disc.
b) don't take more time than reasonably necessary to put the disc into play.

Begs the question: what is reasonable? The rules don't give an explicit answer to this. A good rule of thumb is the following (this is what the WFDF rules now use as standard): When the disc is on the ground, the thrower-to-be should move toward the disc in at least walking pace. Similarly, while carrying the disc to the spot where it is to be put into play, move at least in walking pace at all times.
And what is "standing over the disc"? Well, we had this in the 10th and there were all kinds of different interpretations of this. Don't worry about it in the 11th too much, since in most cases it is covered by b) anyways. The only difference is that no offensive player may stand over the disc due to a) while b) only talks about the thrower-to-be.

So what do you do if you think the other team is violating XIX.B? Two options:
1) Call "Violation" and stop play. This does not really speed up the game, so it is somewhat counter productive. But well, there are times and places for this:
- The thrower-to-be delays the game to have his offense set up. Stopping play here will stop this.
- The other team repeatedly violates this rule and you get the impression that you should stop play to quickly and respectfully remind them of the rule.
2) Invoke XIII.A.5. This is like calling a violation without stopping play (a warning). It has some teeth to it since you are allowed to initiate a stall count if they keep delaying two seconds after the warning. But if they stop delaying immediately, play is continued normally.

What happened to the old "delay of game"?
In the 10th, you could call "delay of game" whenever someone was standing over the disc and start the count immediately, no matter what they did after your call. You don't have this sharp "weapon" anymore. If the offense reacts quickly to your warning, you don't get to start the stall. On the other hand, XIX.B applies to a lot more situations, where there was nothing you could do in the 10th, since there, no one was standing over the disc:
- on a stoppage, the thrower does not present the disc for a check but rather takes some time to call a play;
- the thrower-to-be jumps back and forth from one foot to the other over the disc to call a play and let his team set up;
- carrying a disc back from out of bounds, the thrower uses the full 20 seconds to put the disc into play (waiting just a couple feet from the line) while his team mates cut to get open. On a good cut, he quickly puts the disc into play and throws...
- the thrower-to-be stands 10 (?) feet from the disc waiting for his team to set up;
- ...

So, the new rule applies to many more situations, but in turn your reaction to it is less severe. If one player stands over the disc and runs away from it once you call the warning, there is nothing you can do about it, as long as some other player quickly moves in to pick up the disc. Still, standing over the disc like this IS a violation of XIX.B, so doing this intentionally is a violation of the spirit of the game (=cheating).

The effect of this whole change is that all these "crafty" delays are now illegal, and hopefully the game will move along quicker without the need of many warnings.

Later,
Flo.