Proposal for the Addition of Team Rules
2007-12-18
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This page contains a proposal for the introduction of rules for Team Events into the Racketlon Rules. Previously, rules for the Team Events have been part of the Tour Requirements Specification. (In the 2008 Tour Requirements Spec they have been removed though under the assumption that they would be included in the Racketlon Rules.)
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Present Team Rule (as published in the 2007 Tour Requirments Spec)

1) National teams
If a National team event is held at any of the Super World Tour or World
Tour events tournament following requirements must be followed, as valid
for the world champs:
- Fixed order for the matches in the team event: M1 - L M2 - M3
- The World Ranking should be applied strictly as regards who should play
in each of the matches (M1 - M2 - M3). This means e.g. that the player in
M2 must not be ranked higher than the player in M1 etc.
- Players with no world ranking must be ranked at the end
- Teams that have one player or players with no world ranking shouldn’t
be seeded even though they would have been seeded due to the ranking
of the other team members.
- Seedings at team competitions should compile out of the sum of the
singles rankings of the best 3 male players and the best female player on
the squad for the competition.

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Proposed Wording for Introduction into the Racketlon Rules:

Rules Specific for Team Events

For example at World Championships a Team Event for national teams has traditionally taken place for three men and one woman. These are the general rules for this format:

Definitions:
AW = The woman of Team A
AM1 = The best man in Team A
AM2 = The second best man in Team A
AM3 = The third best man in Team A
The corresponding notations are used for Team B (BW, BM1, BM2 and BM3)

General
The team match consists of four individual Racketlon matches as follows:
AM3 vs BM3
AM2 vs BM2
AW vs BW
AM1 vs BM1

Scoring
a) In line with the fundamental principle of "each rally counts" the winner of the team match is not the team that wins most individual matches but the team that wins most points in total.

b) The individual matches may optionally, in order to e.g. save time, be played to 15 or 11 instead of the standard 21.

Order of Play
Within a team match the following order of play shall apply as regards the start of each individual match:
M3 - M2 - W - M1

Ranking
a) Care should be taken so that the male players (M1, M2, M3) are ranked according to strength in order to provide for the best men, the second best men and the third best men of each team to face each other respectively.

b) Within a tournament the ranking may not change.

The Team
a) In the context of a team tournament a team may contain a maximum of 3 reserves; Max 2 men and max 1 woman. This means that a tournament team can be max 7 players.

b) Reserves may be deployed during a tournament but never during a team match. If a player needs to interrupt a match due to injury he may not be replaced and loses the remaining points.

c) Before a team match begins each team shall commit to their line-up; i.e. to which 4 team members will be active in it and in what positions. Each of the teams has the right to hide their line-up from their opponents until their opponents have committed to their line-up.

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Comments:

- The rules for the seeding belong in the Tournament Rules (Tour Req Spec) and not in the Rules of Racketlon. (The reason for this is that these rules will have to be allowed to vary depending on the local context.)

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