Since last week’s release of this season’s rules changes, we at MLQ have been actively following the feedback and excitement from our fans and players.
Inspired by the discussion from the community, the MLQ Rules and Policy Committee has decided to implement two separate clarifications to two of our newly implemented rules. While these tweaks do not change the essential nature of the rules we released last week, we believe that they will enhance the nature of the rules as they were meant to be enforced.
The first change, brought to us by Martin Pyne (his second improvement to our rules in as many years), will change the snitch value to 45 points. This will allow anyone, upon immediately viewing the score of a game to know which team, if any, caught the snitch, and removes the need for any future punctuation to be listed in our game rules. It also removes the need for a tiebreaker on edge cases where a synchronous goal and snitch catch leave both teams at the set score.
The second change, pointed out by Michael Clark-Polner, clarifies our advantage rule—indicating that the fouled-player receives the ball after advantage abates and is brought back on broom at a restrictor line if they had been dismounted. It also clarifies that the restrictor line that a fouled player is eligible to return to is based on the spot at which the foul occurred. While we are still no longer mandating advantage markers, referees will still be allowed to use them at their discretion to indicate such fouls.
We are excited to see these rules implemented in our 2019 season. If you’re curious to see how they will affect the development of the sport, or if you would like to test them out for yourself, sign up to tryout for an MLQ team in your area. The fully-updated ruleset can be found here.