Suggestions for Racketlon Rules Changes 2008

[H]

To ALL Members of the Racketlon Community:

This is your last chance to suggest any changes to the Racketlon Rules
for this year's Annual General Meeting of the International Racketlon
Federation - to be held at the World Championships in Germany. I will
need your proposals on Friday at the latest.

Your suggestions should contain the following:
1) Name of the proposer
2) Proposed change (exact wording)
3) Reason for change (pros AND cons)

You can send your suggestions either openly as a post in this chat
thread or to my e-mail address (e.g. by clicking "reply to author" on
this message).

Presently valid rules can be found here: http://www.racketlon.com/rackrules.html
(or, identically, on Racketlon.net)

We welcome your ideas. In the spirit of democracy I will make an
effort to put serious suggestions received this way on the agenda of
the AGM!

Hans Mullamaa
- FIR Rules Officer



P.S.

The AGM will be held on Friday 28 Nov. 9pm

Here are some paragraphs from the FIR statutes relevant to changes of
the Racketlon Rules:

8.5 Requests, Proposals and nominations to the General Meeting can be
made by any member
association or any member of the Council and must be submitted to the
Council latest two weeks before the General Meeting by letter, Fax or
E-mail. Any request or proposal received by the appropriate date must
appear on the agenda of the meeting.

8.6 No amendment, other than one of wording which does not alter the
meaning or intent of the original proposal, shall be accepted by the
Chair at a General Meeting unless it shall have been directly sent to
the Council no later than two weeks in advance of the meeting. Notice
of any amendment received shall be sent by the Council to all members
of the FIR 10 days before the date of the meeting at which the
proposal shall be considered together with the agenda.

17.2 No alteration shall be made to the Rules of Racketlon except at a
General Meeting. Any proposal embodying such alteration, or one having
a likewise effect, must be carried by a majority of two-thirds of the
votes cast. Such alterations will take effect on the 1st January of
the year following the General Meeting unless decided otherwise by the
General Meeting.

[JOD]

Will Marcel be carrying on doing a fantanstic job as President is my
first questions? if not,has anyone mention a replacement, as at the
Gothenberg tournament i was asked my a couple of people with votes for
the upcoming elections, i would ask Marcel if possible to stay on,
unless there are people with the interest and time to step into his
shoes.
If not, a certain J Porsborn is a possible choice with his outstanding
tennis knowledge and tennis connections he would be good replacement.
Or even that slick tt player from Belguim Gert Persman, i guess its
all about time and interest.
It seems we have gone almost to the point in Europe,where we can't
take the sport to too many new countries and really do that much more
with the sport either.

See you all in Germany
A Non Mikko K Vs M Eliasson Final..... any takers...???

[H]

Regarding who is running for President for the next period Gert
Peersman should be the best person to ask since he is the chairman of
the Election committee and I believe is collecting candidates for
Council right now. (As I understand it Marcel is a candidate for
carrying on as President.)

But that's a different thread. Let's dedicate this one to suggestions
for the Racketlon Rules. Anyone?

[Norty Vet]

Are the Racketlon Rules actually rules or guidelines? I see that the
FIR sanctioned Dutch Challenger tournament this weekend is
incorporating real squash doubles with 4 players on court.
Under the Rules of Racketlon rule 3.1 (Players on court) it states
that doubles squash is 'played as singles'
Has a concession been granted or has this been overlooked?

Also as I'm sure some of you are aware in April 2008 the WSF amended
some of the squash doubles rules and in some instances with regard to
interference STROKES now apply whereas before only lets could be
called - http://www.worldsquash.org.uk/WSF2008DoublesRules.pdf

Have fun!

> > > General Meeting.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[H]

Hi Norty Vet,

It is a requirement on tour events (and challengers) to follow the FIR
Rules of Racketlon. And the Dutch doubles event this weekend clearly
does not as you correctly imply.

And I actually don't know whether their doubles event is really
sanctioned by the FIR and will count towards the world ranking. If it
is they must have been given an exemption. Marc (the tournament
director) or Michi (tour coordinator) would know which of these two it
is.

In any case, personally I like the fact that they are trying out
something new. And I will follow this experiment with interest. If it
works out well we should consider introducing "real" squash doubles as
an option in the rules. (One might wonder though how these two options
should coexist on the World Tour; two separate events or counting
towards the same world ranking?)

/H

P.S. The WSF stroke instead of let change is interesting! Care to tell
us exactly which cases this applies to? (Sorry about my ignorance.
Perhaps the Rules Officer should know better!)

On Nov 13, 3:17 pm, Norty Vet <graha...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Are the Racketlon Rules actually rules or guidelines? I see that the
> FIR sanctioned Dutch Challenger tournament this weekend is
> incorporating real squash doubles with 4 players on court.
> Under the Rules of Racketlon rule 3.1 (Players on court) it states
> that doubles squash is 'played as singles'
> Has a concession been granted or has this been overlooked?
>
> Also as I'm sure some of you are aware in April 2008 the WSF amended
> some of the squash doubles rules and in some instances with regard to
> interference STROKES now apply whereas before only lets could be

> called -http://www.worldsquash.org.uk/WSF2008DoublesRules.pdf

[H]

The rules proposals that will come up for decision at the Annual
General Meeting to be held in Germany next Friday have now been
published on http://www.racketlon.com/rulesprop08.html !

Feel free to comment! I have invited the decision makers to take part
in this discussion so if you want to influence them this might just be
the place to do it. Let us know your view! Alternatively get in touch
with your country representative.

There are a total of seven proposals, three out of which address the
squash doubles. Here is the list:

Proposed Changes (click links for full proposals):
1) Squash Doubles Order: Let Them Choose!
2) Squash Doubles Order: Independent Matches & Relevant Rankings
(Proposal 2 is only relevant if proposal 1 is NOT approved)
3) Squash Doubles Split (2 sets to 11)
4) Towel Breaks
5) One Point Margin to Win Set
6) Coaching
7) Receiver Side (forehand/backhand) in Tennis; Opportunity to Switch
at 11

Full details are available through http://www.racketlon.com/rulesprop08.html

Thanks everyone for input!

Hans Mullamaa
(FIR Rules Officer)

[JOD]

Proposed changes to the rules, again i know we are a fairly new sport,
in sporting years, we have not been around to long, so changing
rules ,what seem to be every 5 minutes, even the players that have
been around for a while get confussed with a different rule per
tournament almost.
The proposed rule changes, the 1st 3 rules, dont bother with,just play
squash doubles,4th rule change, already takes place.
5th one point margine ok 6th coaching already takes place,7th isnt
really important change, as for doubles in each of the 4 sport we play
the sports differently why not play all 4 the same, you serve to each
player once in two servers, this only happens in badminton and tennis,
table tennis dosent help matters as we only serve from one side, why
not bring in that as a change , serve from the left side of the table,
then finish off racketlon doubles with squash doubles,, again with the
same service rules as the 3 other sport.
Lastly for doubles, this goes out the recent Dutch event, safety, it
didnt look like they where any goggles been worn for the match beening
shown on the video

> Full details are available throughhttp://www.racketlon.com/rulesprop08.html

[H]

Thanks for input, JOD!

I absolutely agree with you that we should not change the rules every
day. The rules should be stable and that's why we have agreed (in our
statutes) that a rules change must get a majority of at least two
thirds of the votes cast at a General Meeting in order go through. And
that we should only implement any changes at the beginning of each
year. Adding to the stability is the fact that countries with many
players on the world ranking get more votes, which should generally
mean that voting power comes with experience.

For reference these are the only real changes that have been made to
the Racketlon (singles) rules since I wrote the first rules in English
back in June 2001:

2002-05-17:
margin-of-two (22-20) counting introduced
2002-12-03:
gummiarm tiebreak introduced
2005-02-17:
Changed the order of sports so that squash and badminton switched
place into tt-ba-sq-te
2007-01-01:
The serve games shortened from 5 to 2 serves.
A single toss rule introduced implying alternating "start-to-serve"
advantages. (Previously there was a toss before each set.)

Of course, there have been a lot of other changes done to the rules
document but they have all been relatively minor, e.g. improvements in
order to regulate areas previously unregulated (such as the length of
breaks, conduct on court etc.) or improvements of the wording and
structure of the document itself. A full revision history is available
at the end of the rules document:
http://www.racketlon.com/rackrules.html

Most of the previous versions of the rules are available through links
in the revision history. For fun here is the first rules document
published in June 2001 at a time when the first international
Racketlon tournament was yet to take place and the word "Racketlon"
gave 4(!) hits on Google:
http://www.racketlon.com/rackrules.010617.htm

[H]

Happy New Year Everyone!

The official Racketlon Rules document on Racketlon.net, and
identically on Racketlon.com, has now been updated with the changes
adopted at the AGM. There are three major changes. In short they are
the following:

1) SQUASH DOUBLES ORDER BY CHOICE
The playing order in squash doubles will as of now be decided by each
pair themselves (which, in most cases, should lead to the two best
squash players finishing the set). At FIR sanctioned events the order
shall stay the same during each tournament.

2) NO COACHING DURING PLAY
Rules about coaching have been introduced; Coaching is from now on
allowed only during the breaks between sets and at the half time break
within each set.

3) TENNIS DOUBLES: OPTION TO SWITCH RECEIVING AT 11
In the tennis doubles set the receiving arrangement (forehand or
backhand) may now optionally be changed at 11. (Previously each player
had to keep receiving on the same side during the whole set.)

For full details on the changes made (and which proposals were
rejected) see the AGM rules proposals on http://www.racketlon.com/rulesprop08.html
(Each of the proposal documents has been updated with a record of
which decision was made at the AGM.)

Hans Mullamaa
- acting Rules Officer