Wednesday 12 November 2008
Should they be allowed?
As the debate rages on around the topic of video replays highlighting refereeing errors in top-flight football; a similar issue is also raising its head in European Ultimate. Should photographs of Ultimate be allowed?
Recent controversies involving members of the Chevron massive include Christian "Wigsy" Nistris' contested layout D on Skogshyddan's David Wesley in the sudden-death point of the EUC final between GB and Sweden, where a photo taken on the sideline was outrageously offered as evidence that the D was clean. Being the glory hunter he is, Nistri then went on to cause more controversy later in the same point, when attempting a layout catch of a disc extraordinarily close to the ground. Photos suggest that it was surely caught, however video evidence is inconclusive.
More recently, Chevron's MVP of 2008 Mark Davin has been involved in a heated debate with Ragnarok's Lasse, rumoured not to be the star of the 1960s to 1990s hit TV show, despite a similar shaggy appearance. Again, photographic evidence has been brought to this writer's attention, indicating that an endzone catch that was called "out" by Davin and "woof" by Lasse at the time, was in fact, in.
The evidence – it's close...
Picture courtesy of ultimatephotos.org
It's really close...
Picture courtesy of ultimatephotos.org
On closer inspection however, the issue of doctoring becomes apparent. Not only are there shadows in the pictures, indicating that the sun was out whilst Chevron were playing a competitive match (a virtual impossibility due to 'sod's law', plus seemingly unlikely given the excessive thermal clothing worn by these players), but the cone clearly seen in the bottom right hand corner of the picture is yellow, when this reporter is convinced they were orange. Further to this, in the first photograph it appears that Ragnarok's number 8 is "in", however he has not yet caught the disc. In the second photograph, where the disc has been caught, he is clearly "way out".<.p>
This totally unbiased reporter will leave it up to you to decide whether the correct call that was made at the time, was indeed correct, and once again leave that controversial issue of the use of photographs in top-flight Ultimate, up in the air.
Tony Tricolor