Although there are instances where Spirit scores given are ‘retaliatory’, having the Game Advisor give the scores stops one of the fundamental objectives of the scoring system:
1) Educate players on what Spirit of the Game is
(the other two objectives are: 2) Help teams to improve specific parts of their Spirit, and 3) Celebrate SOTG by awarding a prize to the team that gets the highest score)
It is so important that teams reflect on the game and as a team, not individual, make the score. Game Advisors do not see the whole game. They are just one person that can focus on one thing at the time.
Further education is needed to reduce this from happening and Spirit Directors must talk to a team if there is an indication that a score is given out of retaliation. It happened in Lecco and we talked to a team about this and they changed their score afterwards.