Pulled foot mechanic and timing

[GarthB]

No-one is advocating NEVER seeking help.

Most everyone in their own way and style seems to agree that no one is advocating NEVER seeking help and also no one is advocating ALWAYS seeking help. The point of contention appears to be where the emphasis should be. It has to be somewhere.

For me. the emphasis is on training and performance. That is the hope we have to reduce the number of times that getting help is requested and more importantly, it will reduce the number of times that an umpire may feel that getting help is needed.

Some others appear, to me, by simple word count, repetition and other tactics, to be putting the emphasis on the justification of getting help. This, in my opinion, is similar to the modern public educational ploy of trying to get students to have "positive self-esteem" prior to having done anything that would create the opportunity of positive self-esteem. Sort of like, "Yes, Johnny, you only got 2 out of 20 correct, but the important part is you feel good about yourself. Think how much better Johnny would feel if he had learned well enough (or benn taught well enough) to get 20 out of 20 correct.

I have no argument that there may well be a time an umpire feels the need to get help. No need to spend bandwidth justifying that. I believe it would lead to better umpiring if we spent our energy and time on learning our craft so that those occasions are drastically reduced.