yeah too true, it's going to be pretty brutal at times
i think they are able to raise the pool level slightly to make it 2m, i hope they are able to do that.... and adding to the depth, the water in durban is characteristically very murky. i know they have promised to clean the filters before the competition, but who knows whether this will work... last time we were there in 2005, at the start of the practice days the water was pretty nice and clear... then i think on the second morning someone started purging the filters into the main pool and you could see clouds of muck being pumped in.... i have no idea whether that was part of the normal process of the pool but the result was that visibility dropped to a crappy bubbly level for the duration of the comp.
anyway. i'm sure the organising committee have this all in hand.... the water clarity and depth was identical from hobart in 2000 to chch in 2004, and there was a very marked improvement in quality of reffing and a drop in instances of blatant foul-play that i saw.... so i'm sure it won't be back to the "bad old days", if there were any
and also we now have 3 refs and the refs have a system of teamwork they never had before, which i'm sure will help a lot as they all become more used to it.
sidetracking slightly but slovenia are going to euros.... is there much information on the tournament yet, other than the puck? cmas are paying for the room and board of the refs attending the comp, which is good of them.
quickly back to subbing, the time restriction you mention is a good solution to that problem.... would certainly make it a lot easier for refs. however, for the other reasons others have described, i personally dont think we should loosen things to such an extent... and man wouldnt that make it hard on the players. imagine a player in the suns bin seeing a guy swimming towards him, jumping out, having that player rejoin the play or not make it to the bin in time.... whew it would get dicey. and it would complicate too as it would only allow one sub at a time, or a couple and then team would have to wait for all 4 heads to pop up before anyone else can go... quite hard to visualise actually