Rules of Play

This page pro­vides some of the gen­eral guide­lines that will be fol­lowed in the 2011 Worlds. Please take the time to read them through care­fully, to avoid unnec­es­sary dis­putes and last-minute sur­prises at the tour­na­ment. If you think some­thing essen­tial is miss­ing, do let us know, e.g. by post­ing a comment.

FREESTYLE

Dis­ci­plines

The freestyle dis­ci­plines at the 2011 IFPA World Foot­bag Cham­pi­onships are:

• Open sin­gles freestyle routines
• Open dou­bles freestyle routines
• Open shred 30
• Open cir­cle contest
• Open request con­test (side­line event)
• Open sick 3 (side­line event)
• Women sin­gles freestyle routines
• Women dou­bles freestyle routines
• Women shred 30
• Women cir­cle contest
• Inter­me­di­ate freestyle routines
• Inter­me­di­ate shred 30
• Inter­me­di­ate request con­test (side­line event)
• Mixed dou­bles freestyle routines
• Open 2-square com­pe­ti­tion (side­line event)

A dis­ci­pline will be orga­nized if there are at least four reg­is­tered play­ers or teams.

Rules

X-dex will not be counted in Shred 30. More detailed Shred 30 and Sick 3 rules will be added later.

When the final ver­sion of the sched­ule is pub­lished every­one is expected to fol­low it. Being late means being scratched.

Venues and surfaces

Most of the events will be held indoors at the Töölö Sports Hall. Shred 30 and Sick 3 events might be orga­nized on an out­door venue. The sur­face of play at the Sports Hall will be a rub­ber sports mat on a wooden floor. The warm up area will have a sim­i­lar surface.

Check-in

Each player com­pet­ing in rou­tines must bring their rou­tine music(s) for each round to check-in on a CD or on flash mem­ory. The check-in will be the last pos­si­ble place to deliver the music.

FOOTBAG NET

Dis­ci­plines

The Net dis­ci­plines at the 2011 IFPA World Foot­bag Cham­pi­onships are:

• Open Sin­gles Net
• Open Dou­bles Net
• Open Women’s Sin­gles Net
• Open Women’s Dou­bles Net
• Open Mixed Dou­bles Net
• Inter­me­di­ate Sin­gles Net
• Inter­me­di­ate Dou­bles Net

Scor­ing System

All net events in the tour­na­ment will be played using rally scor­ing. Rally scor­ing was added to the Offi­cial Rules of Foot­bag Sports in 2009. This is the first year that rally scor­ing will be used at the World Cham­pi­onship level. In rally scor­ing, a point is awarded to the win­ner of each rally, regard­less of who serves. The serve and a point are awarded to a receiv­ing team who wins a rally.

Tour­na­ment Formats

Men’s Open Sin­gles Net will be played in single-elimation for­mat. In all other net cat­e­gories a qual­i­fy­ing stage with pools of 3–4 play­ers or teams will be played before mov­ing to a single-elimination cham­pi­onship bracket.

Venues and Surfaces

All open cat­e­gory matches in pools and in cham­pi­onship brack­ets will be played indoors in the Töölö Sports Hall. Con­so­la­tion matches will be played out­doors in the Töölö Sports Field right next to the main site. Inter­me­di­ate net cat­e­gories, except for the final matches, will also be played outdoors.

Indoors, the sur­face of play will be a wood sports floor or a rub­ber sports mat on wood sim­i­lar to those used in pro­fes­sional bad­minton tour­na­ments. Court areas will be enclosed by ban­ners, floor­ball boards, or other con­struc­tions to min­i­mize dis­trac­tions from neigh­bour­ing courts.

Match Sched­ules

All pool stage and cham­pi­onship bracket stage matches in open cat­e­gories will be sched­uled. After enter­ing the court, play­ers will have 5–10 min­utes of warm up time before they are advised to start their match. Warm up space will be avail­able and some warm up courts are reserved for play­ers who are about to start their offi­cial match.

Uni­forms

All net play­ers com­pet­ing in this tour­na­ment should wear shirts in all their matches. Teams com­pet­ing in dou­bles events should have match­ing out­fits. If this is a prob­lem for play­ers reg­is­tered with­out part­ner, the tour­na­ment organ­i­sa­tion is will­ing to help. Play­ers should also wear clean, non-marking shoes suit­able for indoor use when play­ing in Töölö Sports Hall.

Ref­er­ee­ing in prelims

All matches in pools should be ref­er­eed by a player in same pool. Play­ers play­ing in a match do the line judg­ing them­selves, and the head judge is there for mak­ing the calls in case of con­flicts. The head judge will also be judg­ing net fouls and con­tact fouls. Also, the head judge is respon­si­ble for get­ting the match going in time and inform­ing the results to the tour­na­ment staff.

The bags

We will be using offi­cial tour­na­ment net bags in every match. These bags are nat­u­rally pro­vided for the play­ers by the tour­na­ment organization.

Com­ing and going

Play­ers should inform the tour­na­ment staff at the venues when they arrive to the site and espe­cially when they leave. This is very impor­tant in order to stay in sched­ule, and to avoid peri­ods of wait­ing and uncertainty.