When is a parry really a parry

[The_Claw]

Is it a styilistic difference? If you don't take their point out of line sufficiently, their opportunity for counterattack is very high. Which system works better?

[Capt. Slo-mo]

Originally posted by pkt
In sabre, an attack that lands on the opponent's blade or guard is parried whether the defender intends to parry or not. A lot of refs in fact call the latter incorrectly: i.e. a cut that lands on the guard then finishes on target should rightly be called thusly:
attack: no - give hand signal for parried
remise: yes - give hand signal for hit.

However, when cutting to the forearm, often the blade will land on target first, and then clang the bell guard on the way to the end of the action.

This is a tough one to call. A referee who just listens will call the parry. If they watch the lights and the action carefully, they'll see the proper sequence. But it seems to me that 8 times out of 10 if you hit the bell guard in such an otherwise successful attack, you'll lose the call.

[edew]

Depends on who you are and who your opponent is (and who the referee is, too), doesn't it?

PK, you're being too 4n4l retentive again. The basic point I'm trying to make is this:

there's a (relatively) stationary blade and a (relatively) moving blade. If the moving blade meets up with the stationary blade, then the real question is, who gains right of way? I don't care if it's called a beat, a parry, tickling the ivories, a prise de fer, or whatever. The outcome is the important thing.

In sabre, if my forte meets up with your foilble, I get the right-of-way. If my foilble meets up with your forte, you get the right of way. Of course, either one of us could lose the right of way if we don't do something with it immediately once we gain it.

So as Inq described, whacking HARD at the strong part of the opponent's blade, enough to clearly deflect it, is not sufficient to count as gaining right of way.

There may be some foil refs who dabble in sabre who might give such an action for Inq. But even those are few and far between.

[The_Claw]

well, i see your point, my earlier training has led me to believe otherwise, also, for moi, i don't pick on the ref's only a tiny little bit, in fun, later on, never during the bout or competition, it's another way of getting rid of lactic acid build up. My belief is that refing is very difficult, because there's so much going on, and they try not to play favorites. In my very limited time of practice reffing, my approach has been to get the fencers to demonstrate clearly what their actions/movements were, even best friends, it's to help them work hard at their fencing, then they improve more. I love watching good fencers jump up the ranks, and especially the teenagers, with so much promise.

[gofence]

Thank you to everybody for your feedback - which has helped in some ways, but not in others. As a result I was at a competition yesterday with my daughter and took the opportunity to ask some of the refs how they judged parries. The result of my poll was a roughly 50/50 split between the following views:

1. If it is a direct attack then the defender's parry needs to be firm enough to deflect the blade to get ROW. In a compound attack if the blade is found, even with the lightest of contact, during any of the feints then that is sufficient for the defender to get ROW, however once the attacker starts the lunge then a parry sufficient to deflect the blade is needed to get ROW.

2. Any contact, no matter how slight, with the blade made by the defender during either the feint or the lunge is a parry and the defender gets ROW.

What I would be interested in knowing - is how many people think opinion 1 is correct and how many peole think opinion 2 is correct. Please remember this is a foil question.

thanks for your help.

[magma]

'whatever contact make, however slight' should count as row, that would mean that I, or you could just stand there and, if you try this in the salle that does not subscribe to it, you'll lose; find the blade and riposte, but, since the first attack was strong, compound or direct, and they get through the so-called 'defense'. It seems finding the blade has become a defense. The target area in foil, has to be protected, is it sufficient to merely touch the opponents blade? It could have been a reflexive or timid beat attack.

[edew]

Originally posted by gofence
Thank you to everybody for your feedback - which has helped in some ways, but not in others. As a result I was at a competition yesterday with my daughter and took the opportunity to ask some of the refs how they judged parries. The result of my poll was a roughly 50/50 split between the following views:

1. If it is a direct attack then the defender's parry needs to be firm enough to deflect the blade to get ROW. In a compound attack if the blade is found, even with the lightest of contact, during any of the feints then that is sufficient for the defender to get ROW, however once the attacker starts the lunge then a parry sufficient to deflect the blade is needed to get ROW.

2. Any contact, no matter how slight, with the blade made by the defender during either the feint or the lunge is a parry and the defender gets ROW.

What I would be interested in knowing - is how many people think opinion 1 is correct and how many peole think opinion 2 is correct. Please remember this is a foil question.

thanks for your help.

For 1, I don't see a need to distinguish between a direct attack and a compound attack: if the defender is attempting a parry and there is blade engagement, then it's a parry.

For 2, it again depends on whether the blade engagement is an attempt to parry versus just sticking the blade out there and it happened to also include a blade engagement.

[oiuyt]

Eric is right. If fencer A is actively seeking to parry and creates a contact, s/he has a parry. The deflection DOES occur as Eric pointed out (much) earlier. This is the way it will consistently be called at the higher levels. Given that the way the best refs call actions is the gold standard, as a ref one should attempt to make calls the way the best refs make calls.

I'm not sure why the board insists are arguing either a) no, the best refs all call things wrong, they need to go read the rulebook, b) well, MY club/division/coach/region calls things differently than they do on the national/international level, why aren't we right and them wrong, our way is in the rule book, c) no, you may be a nationally rated ref and I've only just started presiding practice bouts in a club setting, but I've got the answer and you're wrong, or d) well, I know you're a national ref and/or have a large amount of experience seeing how calls are made at the national level, but I've seen how calls are made at my local 18 person tournament that includes 2 D's and 3 E's and you're saying that you're seeing things that I haven't seen, you must be wrong.

If you want to know how ROW is called, ask. The people who are experienced refs and/or experienced competitors at the national level will answer. Arguing that they are wrong after they do so, based on what you've seen at the local level is just stupid. Doesn't mean that you don't have to deal with the interpretations at your local level when fencing locally, but if you want to know what the real answer is (ie what will be called outside of your local area, around the country and world) you need to listen to the people with the experience.

I frequently disagree with EDew on how things should be, but rarely when it comes to how things are. Specifically in this case, he knows how to referee. He knows the rules. He knows how the rules are actually interpreted.

-B :)

[edew]

Originally posted by oiuyt
Eric is right. If fencer A is actively seeking to parry and creates a contact, s/he has a parry. The deflection DOES occur as Eric pointed out (much) earlier. This is the way it will consistently be called at the higher levels. Given that the way the best refs call actions is the gold standard, as a ref one should attempt to make calls the way the best refs make calls.

I'm not sure why the board insists are arguing either a) no, the best refs all call things wrong, they need to go read the rulebook, b) well, MY club/division/coach/region calls things differently than they do on the national/international level, why aren't we right and them wrong, our way is in the rule book, c) no, you may be a nationally rated ref and I've only just started presiding practice bouts in a club setting, but I've got the answer and you're wrong, or d) well, I know you're a national ref and/or have a large amount of experience seeing how calls are made at the national level, but I've seen how calls are made at my local 18 person tournament that includes 2 D's and 3 E's and you're saying that you're seeing things that I haven't seen, you must be wrong.

If you want to know how ROW is called, ask. The people who are experienced refs and/or experienced competitors at the national level will answer. Arguing that they are wrong after they do so, based on what you've seen at the local level is just stupid. Doesn't mean that you don't have to deal with the interpretations at your local level when fencing locally, but if you want to know what the real answer is (ie what will be called outside of your local area, around the country and world) you need to listen to the people with the experience.

I frequently disagree with EDew on how things should be, but rarely when it comes to how things are. Specifically in this case, he knows how to referee. He knows the rules. He knows how the rules are actually interpreted.

-B

Thanks for the support. However, I think one should also realize where these questions come from. At the local-not-so-strong competition, the not-so-competent fencers don't make good, clean actions, so all their parries and their counter-attacks look almost similar. Bang! There's a clash of blades and we (the referees) have no clue whether the clash was because fencer A wanted to parry B's blade, beat B's blade, or hit B's body, but got stuck at B's blade.

Then, after the initial engagement of blades, neither A nor B are clearly showing that they want to hit the opponent. So we (the referees) don't know whether it's A who thinks he has right of way, or B who thinks he has right of way. Neither are sure of him (or her-) self.

Also, they get their blades all tangled up, doing the theatrical push-push struggle against the evil Zarg actions and we (the referees) have no clue by then who has final control of the opponent's blade. First to hit then gets right of way, just so we can get this pitiful bout over with.

That's why many beginning fencers question whether they properly had control of the blade, or whether their (or their opponent's) action was a parry versus something else. That's because their actions are so sloppy they're not clear to the referee. The referee will do the best he or she can do, but GIGO, as they say.

Oh, and then these middling fencers eventually face a strong fencer. The middling fencers are used to the brute-force approach to parries, so when the competent, experienced fencer makes a clean, crisp parry -- which really does deflect the point WAY out of target space, but does not end such a parry with the slam-the-door style of parry which moves and keeps the blade five feet away from the body -- and makes a simple riposte, the middling fencer thinks that the parry was insufficient. But oh it is. It's quite sufficient. It's just that the experienced fencer felt economical to just parry and protect himself, and not himself and the whole Brady Bunch and Partridge Family standing next to him.

Also, these middling fencers usually do some goofy actions with their blades as they initiate an attack. They are either trying to emulate something they saw done by experienced fencers or they're trying out a new technique they learned from the coach, or they're trying to "befuddle" the opponent.

The experienced fencer/opponent isn't befuddled at all, so tries to gently steer the hack-saw attack back to civilized discourse via a simple parry riposte. He does, but the middling fencer thinks because he has 500 ft-lb of torque on his spinning blade, generating 200 hp, his propellor MUST be stronger than the butterfly parry riposte done by the experienced defender. Of course, if one were to see the action in slo-mo, one will see that propellor crash into the gentle butterfly and bounce off with the same acceleration and momentum as occurred on the incoming impact.

That's why the beginning fencers complain about why their attacks could possibly be called parried. They feel that no one could possibly move a blade held by their concrete fist, that no one could possible deflect their "Barry Bonds" swing of their blades.

[gofence]

OK - now I get it.

The question I should have asked all along is how do the best referees presiding at the highest levels usually judge the effectiveness of a parry. And if the opinion of those more experienced than me is that the economical, light touch parry is OK at the higher levels then my question is answered. Thank you all.

The only problem is that most Scottish fencers rarely get to fence with the best referees presiding. My limited knowledge is that Scotland only has one international level referee - and he does Epee. Even the Scottish Open is a "fencers ref each other affair" so it is only too easy for differing interpretations of the rule book to flourish. And that is why I asked my question in this "international" forum to try and get a big picture perspective on the matter.

Anyway I am off to pratice a lighter touch.

gofence

[Purple Fencer]

But see, Gofence, if you HADN'T asked it this first way, we would not have had Eric's highly entertaining last post!

LOL Eric! Thanks for starting my day witb a good laugh!

Think I'll copy that post I pass it around...

[edew]

My intent was not to belittle the middling and beginning fencers. We all were beginning fencers at one time. I still sometimes fence against better fencers and question whether the action they did was really a parry (because I might have befuddled the better fencer and his execution wasn't exactly as clean and crisp as usual, for example).

But I'm also quite aware of what might possibly be the cause for consternation of beginning fencers as they (try to) move up the ranks: they think their actions are the best in the world, when indeed, it's only the best they can come up with.

I will agree that my comments may be quite ascerbic. Oh well. Let's say my comments are not usually as light as my parries.

[edew]

Originally posted by gofence
OK - now I get it.

The question I should have asked all along is how do the best referees presiding at the highest levels usually judge the effectiveness of a parry. And if the opinion of those more experienced than me is that the economical, light touch parry is OK at the higher levels then my question is answered. Thank you all.

The only problem is that most Scottish fencers rarely get to fence with the best referees presiding. My limited knowledge is that Scotland only has one international level referee - and he does Epee. Even the Scottish Open is a "fencers ref each other affair" so it is only too easy for differing interpretations of the rule book to flourish. And that is why I asked my question in this "international" forum to try and get a big picture perspective on the matter.

Anyway I am off to pratice a lighter touch.

gofence

No, you don't quite get it.

The point is, if your "fencers reffing each other" requires that you bash your opponent's blade before it can be called a parry, then go right ahead and bash away.

But when you fence against better fencers and have referees who have more experience, and they DON'T require bashing each other's blades for parries, you shouldn't go on protesting or complaining or making off-handed remarks about how "some people who claim to have lots of experience" can't tell that such a "parry" didn't exactly deflect the blade from the target. Deal with them just as you would deal with the "club-baby-seals form of parrying" referees.

I, too, have to do this. When some referees don't like the fact that my arm isn't straight out immediately during an attack, I might question once or twice (or blow off my head, but that's another digression), but I'll do the action that the referee wants to see.

[pkt]

so, Eric, gofence, et al,

After all this verbiage, the conclusion is still the same:
"Fence according to the presiding ref and you won't go wrong."

PK

[gofence]

Edew,
Oh no I got it OK but I just didnt feel the need to do the fence the ref as well your opponent stuff again - because I took that as read very early in the discussion. Anybody who has played sport to a high level knows that and although I have yet to fence at a high level- and may never do so - I have played other sports at the top level.

I would also just like to point out that although some of your comments are very useful they do lose their impact if you just keep repeating them with ever more barbed comments. But hey that might just be a cultural difference. Humor sometimes just doesnt travel well - just like Haggis and unlike whisky which tends to travel very well and very far.

gofence

[edew]

I was not referring to any particular opponent when I described how some beginning fencers would make large parries. It's the nature of beginning fencers to do so. Indeed, that's one manifestation of a beginning fencer.