Mon pays

Reflexion on Quidditch World Cup V

McGill Beaters

The final results of Quidditch World Cup V were released on Monday of this week. McGill placed 15th! (I have to say I’m proud of our team. Is there any other sport in which McGill University can claim a spot in the top 15 in the world?)

Looking forward to future seasons of Quidditch, there’s something that happened at the World Cup that I would like to have clarified. It’s not the seeker floor controversy, or even the new gender ratio rule that I’d like to discuss. I’m worried about a beater strategy that I saw one particular team use in a number of games at the World Cup.

Here’s a crash course in being a beater, for those of you who are less familiar with the position:

• A beater’s role is to regulate the flow of the game by “knocking out” players of the opposing team using a bludger
• There are four beaters on the field at any one time—two from each team
• There are three bludgers on the field at any one time
• A beater cannot handle more than one bludger at a time (this means holding a bludger and kicking another one would be illegal)
• If one team has two bludgers, they cannot guard the third bludger

Here’s what the team was doing. If they had possession of two bludgers, one beater would drop his bludger at his hoops, and the second beater would guard it. The first beater would then try to take the third bludger from the other team, effectively removing a bludger from play. (In fact, I also saw occasions where the second beater kicked the guarded bludger while still holding her own if the other team tried to recover it.)

Bludger-kicking aside, this seemed like a dirty strategy to me. I always thought that the spirit of the third bludger rule is that there should be three bludgers in play at all times, and this sort of tactic flies in the face of that. I’d like to have an authoritative word on whether this is legal or not. The official IQA handbook (v. 5) does not mention this sort of strategy at all, so it might be legal, but then the point of the third bludger rule seems to be that all three bludgers are in play. If this sort of strategy is allowed, it effectively removes beaters from the game, making it an all-chaser game. I’m not sure that anyone would want that.

It would be nice to know whether this is legal—one way or the other—for training purposes as we look forward to World Cup VI. If it is legal, we can start training for teams who use this strategy, and if it’s not, then we can continue to focus on other beater tactics.

December 23, 2011 | One comment | Tags: Quidditch