Paffen Sport Contest

“I think in general in sports a lot of refereeing comes down to understanding and respecting the flow of the contest. For example I know in Rugby Union that if one team has advantage or momentum, often fouls by the opposing side will be ignored because stopping play would overall benefit the offending team. You really want to avoid creating perverse incentives, and often rule sets (especially older codes) are what they are because the sport has settled into an equilibrium where a certain tolerance for subjective enforcement makes the overall game stronger and fairer. I'm sure you can see parallels to legal systems in many jurisdictions throughout the world.”