Over the course of 2024, the FISTF Rules and Referees Committee (RRC) was establishing the foundations for ongoing work in maintaining and updating the Rules of Table Football, as well as improving the quality of referee training.
The first step in laying this foundation will be the implementation of an update of the English version of the Rules of the Game.
This update DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY RULE CHANGES.
It is simply a rewritten version of the existing rules with improvements made.
These improvements include:
– Standardising the wording and spelling of the rules – in particular, settling on UK English as the standard for spelling and grammar
– Removing gendered language
– Clarifying the syntax – many rules were originally written in languages other than English, then translated to varying degrees of success, often resulting in confusing structure and wording.
There have been no changes made to the ordering of the rules, or the intention of any of the rules.
This may happen at a future date but, for now, this is simply a baseline from which to work. Because none of the rules themselves have changed, the existing versions of the Rules of the Game in other languages remain current.
The rewrite of the Rules was undertaken by a team of native English speakers from the UK, USA and Australia and, so, we believe, will be successful in clearly communicating the laws in English.
This version of the Rules of the Game will become the official Version 5.3, effective immediately.
Similar updates in other languages may appear in the future.
FISTF RRC
Link to rules:
https://fistf.com/technical-pages/documents-library/
