Women will pull in half of the points at the highest international level.
April 27, 2021 by Ravi Vasudevan in Livewire, News with 0 comments
WFDF announced today that they will be instituting a new rule around pulling at the World Games in Birmingham, Alabama next summer.
As was the case for the 2017 edition in Wroclaw, Poland, the tournament will continue to use Ratio Rule A from the WFDF rules appendix to decide the gender mix of each point:
A6.2.1. At the start of the game, after the first disc flip, an additional disc flip happens with the winner selecting the gender ratio for the first point. For the second and third points the ratio must be the reverse of the first point. For the fourth and fifth points the ratio must be the same as the first point. This pattern of alternating the ratio every two points repeats until the end of the game (half time has no impact on the pattern).
Additionally, the governing body has added a provision for this iteration of the World Games that states, “A player representing the gender with four players on the field must pull for that point.” This essentially means that half of the pulls in a match will be from man-matching players and half of the pulls in a match will be from woman-matching players.
The rule was proposed by Chair of the WFDF Athletes Commission, Liam Grant — he has been touting this idea since 2019 — and was discussed in the organization’s Women in Sport Commission, Athletes Commission, the Ultimate Committee, and the Ultimate Rules Subcommittee before being adopted.
There are no definite plans to extend this rule to other WFDF Championship events or competition levels, but the World Games will serve as a testing ground for the rule for future consideration.
