New blood rule

[LarryS]

In my opinion, we are making this way more difficult than needed. As the rule quoted above states, the player must be removed "Unless a time out is requested by his/her team and the situation can be corrected by the resumption of play". Seems very clear. A1 and B1 both have blood on their person and/or uniform, BOTH coaches must request a time out to correct the situation or remove the player from the game (thus consecutive time outs).

At our rules clinic last Saturday (Ft Worth), they made it very clear that was the way it needed to be handled. I understood the discussion to be very cut and dried. You want to keep the player in the game, request a TO. In the situation where one teams has used their TOs, I guess they could request an excessive TO and take the T (although that scenario was not mentioned). However, they emphasised that a player could not stay in the game if the blood situation was corrected during a TO taken by the other team...HIS/HER team had to request the TO.

The only situation I can see that would see unfair is after the end of regulation with a tie score (time has expired), the officials notice A1 and B3 both have blood on their uniform. The first team to call a TO can keep that player in the game, the other team would have to remove their player as consecutive TOs are not allowed in that situation (I think, don't have my books at work).