Explaining the new rules

Be Sociable, Share!

Following an earlier post, this post will try to explain the new rules, as there are a lot of grey areas, which players might feel uncomfortable with.

The new rules dictate that a player mustn’t grip legs either to directly attack or block the opponent. Attacks such as Morote-gari, te-guruma, kata-guruma, Sukui-nage, Kibisu-gaeshi, Kuchiki-taoshi are not allowed anymore.
Any such attacks or blocking will be first penalised with a Shido and the second time with Hansokumake.

The important part of the rule that needs to be emphasised is the word ‘direct‘.
Any attack that involves griping of legs as an indirect movement is allowed. For example, when performing Kuchi-gari, and then gripping the Uke’s leg is legal. The same goes for Uchi-gari and grabbing the other leg. These actions are only legal if Uke provides a real reaction where he lifts his leg to avoid the attack.
As for counterattacks, once Tori performs an attack, Uke is able to grip Tori’s legs such as Te-guruma.

Another rule is related to the Golden Score part of the contest, where until now when a contest went into Golden Score, the score board was cleared. From 1st January 2010, the entire marking of the initial contest will be preserved during the Golden Score period. This is to allow the referee to take a decision, in case of no score during the Golden Score period, for the initial time and the Golden Score. Also, it means that if up until now first Shido in a Golden Score did not count as a winning score, with this rule, a first Shido can decide the winner (in case there were penalties in the initial part of the contest).

These rules can be a double edged sword. On the one hand, it can bring the classic Judo back, where you won’t see much ‘wrestling’ kind of techniques and will force players to be more creative with their Judo.
On the other hand, these rules might introduce some negative tactics, as players will try to prevent opponents from attacking for the sake of a leg movement to catalyse a leg grip, which will make players more rigid and static. Until today, there were some players that all they did was wait for others to attack and they will counterattack with Te-guruma. In case two of these players meet, the contest can be very boring and unattractive.

Another rule is the new refereeing system, where instead of having 3 referees, only 1 centre referee will referee the contest, with a “Care” system with 2 cameras filming the contest at 2 different angles will be set to help this unique referee.
This rule can provide some dangerous outcomes as many times a wrong score was given when there were 3 referees, so with one referee it will be even worse. I don’t think that the referee is going to check every decision that is unclear with the Refereeing commission that controls the cameras. In addition, the IJF hasn’t addressed the issue of taking a decision by one referee after an indecisive Golden Score, will he be taking it by himself, or after consulting the Refereeing Committee.

These rules will be further tested in the following IJF competitions: Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi (20-21 Nov 2009), Grand Prix of Qingdao (China; 28-29 Nov 2009), World Cup of Suwon (Korea; 4-5 Dec 2009), and Big Slam of Tokyo (Japan; 11-13 Dec 2009). In addition, these rules will be tested at the European U23 Championships in Antalya, TUR (20-22 Nov 2009), with the exception there will be 3 referees instead of 1.

Be Sociable, Share!