Can the referee reposition the cue-ball after a foul?

[t.lavery55]

There was a lot of discussion surrounding the incident occurring during the 2009 UK Championships regarding Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and referee Jan Verhaas, where Ronnie gained an advantage by committing a foul, but one point that wasn't much mentioned is the fact that, when John came to the table after Ronnie had fouled the black, Jan repositioned the cue-ball so that it was touching a red. Was he allowed to do this?

Section 3 rule 11(d) states "If a foul is committed... any colour not correctly spotted shall remain where positioned...", so logically, it would seem that this should apply to the cue-ball too, and that, once Ronnie had fouled, the position of the cue-ball was condoned.

Section 3 rule 8(g), which specifically deals with this type of situation, states: "If a stationary object ball, not touching the cue-ball when examined by the referee, is later seen to be in contact with the cue-ball BEFORE A STROKE HAS BEEN MADE, the balls shall be repositioned by the referee to his satisfaction." (And vice versa).

It is interesting that it does not specifically say here that the balls cannot be repositioned AFTER A FOUL, but my guess would be that this is simply an omission and that therefore the cue-ball should not have been moved by Jan in the above scenario. It does not seem logical to have one rule for the colours, and another for the cue-ball.

Any thoughts on this?

The incident I am referring to can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX8OJQqicFw
and occurs around 5 minutes 20 seconds into the video.
Official rules: http://www.worldsnooker.com/page/RulesofSnooker

[Odrl]

Here's a pretty long discussion about that incident at the time, mostly about the rule loophole, but also a bit about the touching ball:

http://www.thesnookerforum.co.uk/boa...-That-incident


As I said at the time, here's what I think happened... Jan Verhaas originally replaced the balls to be touching after each of O'Sullivan's misses, but of course it wasn't a priority because it made no difference to O'Sullivan's shot. So when O'Sullivan fouled on his 7th attempt, Verhaas called a touching ball. He didn't really need to check, because he knew for a fact the balls were supposed to be touching, and O'Sullivan hadn't actually moved the balls in question. So he just replaced it for Higgins, the same way referees sometimes replace it when a touching ball becomes non-touching (or the other way around) before the player has actually had the chance to play the shot. :wink:

[t.lavery55]

Here's a pretty long discussion about that incident at the time, mostly about the rule loophole, but also a bit about the touching ball:

http://www.thesnookerforum.co.uk/boa...-That-incident


As I said at the time, here's what I think happened... Jan Verhaas originally replaced the balls to be touching after each of O'Sullivan's misses, but of course it wasn't a priority because it made no difference to O'Sullivan's shot. So when O'Sullivan fouled on his 7th attempt, Verhaas called a touching ball. He didn't really need to check, because he knew for a fact the balls were supposed to be touching, and O'Sullivan hadn't actually moved the balls in question. So he just replaced it for Higgins, the same way referees sometimes replace it when a touching ball becomes non-touching (or the other way around) before the player has actually had the chance to play the shot. :wink:

Thanks for that link. I had read two or three other threads on the forum discussing this incident, but not that one.

How does the referee know for sure that Ronnie O'Sullivan did not cause the balls to move? Is it not possible that O'Sullivan, in the process of going to the table and touching the black, caused a vibration which resulted in the red or the cue-ball moving? Hence, when Jan Verhaas found that the balls were no longer touching, it was because of this, which seems analogous to causing vibration by playing a shot. It could, of course, have been caused by something else, like a defect in the table surface, but in the absence of certainty of the cause, I would have thought that you cannot reposition the balls. That is my understanding of why a colour cannot be respotted if a foul is committed with it wrongly spotted, (even if no shot has been played), and it seems to me that the same should apply here.