No, we don’t carry a rule book on the field. We are supposed know the rules, even as complex as they are.
We certainly do make rule errors - very, very ocassionally. Personally, I’ve never had a coach alert us to an impending rule application error, and I’ve never heard of such happening to others. Not saying it hasn’t happened - just never heard of it in my 42 seasons.
If a coach brought an impending rule error to our attention, I’m sure we’d be initially skeptical. But I know I would search my memory banks to either verify that what we are about to do is correct, or corroborate his claim. If I had any doubt, I’d confer with crew members to get their input. If he is right, we’ll be grateful, make the correction, move on,and then review what we need to do to prevent that near-error from happening again.
Similar with an actual error after the fact (that we can’t fix). If I knew affirmatively that we made an error that he brought to our attention, I’d have no recourse but to acknowledge the error, express regret, and move on. There may be repercussions for the error, but we just have accept them.
The errors that I have made were self-discovered. That doesn’t make them any more acceptable or forgivable. But, we are human, and we just pick ourselves up, and keep trying to do it right.
Robert
