PLANET HOCKEY PLANET HOCKEY

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PC - Goal

PC - Goal

ANALYSIS

Fair play or foul?Deliberate fouling has become just part of the game

One of the distinctions between football and hockey has always been that fouling is an institutional part of the kick-ball game. In

hockey, of course, fouls happened and were occasionally deliberate, but they were never seen as a legitimate tactic to the same extent as they are now in football, write Tom Cooper.

To expand that further, in football there is an implicit assumption that players will go out and commit fouls. There will be consequences of course – free-kicks and cards – but balancing the risks and rewards is essentially a tactical choice. And let’s face it there are players who have built a whole career around stopping other players actually playing football.

And so to hockey. Deliberate, or even clumsy, fouls have, historically, always been severely punished, and the temporary suspension option has given umpires a tool to make sure crime really doesn’t pay for the fouler or their team-mates.

However, the 2014 hockey World Cup, showed that fouling is ascending to a new level in international hockey. Fouls are now being used to achieve specific tactical outcomes in particular areas of the field.

Some highly technical fouls appear to

have been coached and well drilled by many teams. At the same time off-the-ball contact has become as routine as during League Two corners.

To illustrate this point, Push analysed one game in the 2014 World Cup – the fifth/sixth playoff game between Belgium and German (won eventually 4-2 by Belgium). We only looked at the fouls committed by Germany – we are not picking on the Germans, both sides committed a similar number of fouls and the match was fairly typical of the hockey that was played in the Hague.

Take a look at our analysis on the facing page. We counted 24 deliberate fouls by one team in one game. Remember these are not all the fouls, just the ones which were done on purpose. Almost all of the fouls listed were seen by the umpires and were either penalised or waved on with advantage. But with the exception of two green cards in the second-half, none were punished severely.

Looking first at the pitch diagram of where the fouls occur, they are in two main areas of the pitch. In Germany’s attacking quarter, fouls are regularly committed to prevent quick break-outs. These are typically sticks left in or just generally getting in the way when the defenders are trying to get clear or even take a quick hit. A few of these early is

actually quite a good way of testing out the umpires (1, 2 and 5 on the diagram). There are unlikely to be severe consequences even if penalised. One of these was, however, yellow-carded in this game, Belgium’s Cedric Charlier received a ten-minute yellow late on.

The second-group of fouls occurs around the top of the circle. The clustering alone suggests that this has to be a deliberate tactic. Any foul in the circle is, of course, a

Number Clock Foul

1 32:20 Break down of free hit

2 32:01 Knee in back knocks defender off balance

3 26:44 Stick across back of legs stops attacker turning

4 22:18 Defender tackles from right (misses ball) but follows through and stops circle entry

5 20:56 Prevents defender getting clear and starting counter

6 19:25 Deliberate stick tackle

7 15:21 Hip bump as attacker receives ball

8 15:18 Interference with free-hit

9 14:17 Attempt to break down counter but Simon Gougnard breaks through

10 13:07 Cedric Charlier bowled over just after losing possession

11 12:15 Stick hung out by defender to disrupt ball-carriers’ feet

12 11:25 The second tackler in runs straight at Tom Boon who is knocked over – PC

13 1:36 Gougnard run off the ball just outside circle

14 1:00 While replay is showing, Germany break down counter attack with a stick tackle

15 31:40 Max Muller subsequently green-carded for this dumping of a forward on half-way line – sets a better standard for second half

16 31:35 Martin Haner clatters the Belgian off the ball. Could easily have been a stroke and a yellow card. PC awarded

17 27:50 Green card for Jan Phillip Rabente for knocking the Belgian over as he passes

18 22:20 Numerous fouls on this counter attack

19 19:30 Counter attack baulked by attacker running through defender from behind

20 11:56 Hand in the back by Haner goes unpunished – but Belgium score

21 8:01 Receiver bumped

22 2:49 Christopher Zeller didn’t mean to hurt defender, but did try and obstruct with stick

23 00:40 Tom Boon knocked over off the ball

24 00:35 Massive push (Ben Wess) – PC on referral

>>

How to foul and get away with it• Do it just after the ball has gone. You

will stop the player re-joining the attack. The umpire probably won’t see it and if they do will want to play advantage anyway.

• Little things mean a lot. A minor nudge or stick tackle can make all the difference in disturbing balance and control.

• Be deliberately clumsy. If it looks like you just mis-timed it, you can avoid a card.

Germany’s Jan Phillip Rabente (right) gets close to Belgium’s Florent van Aubel at the 2014 World Cup

Photo: hockeyimages.co.uk

Watch the videoSee www.pushhockey.co.uk/articles/2014-Germany-Belgium

The ‘clock’ column in the table corresponds with the game clock at the top of the screen

Fouls by Germany vs Belgium in the 2014 World Cup 5/6 decider

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PLANET HOCKEY

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Moving to the men’s job – Max Caldas

penalty corner. It is only natural that players are more careful in there. But the other side of the coin is that they are being deliberately careless outside of it. Even in the circle, however, umpires are reluctant to award strokes – numbers 12 and 16 might well have been given as strokes for deliberate fouls on players on the ball/likely to receive the ball.

The vast majority of the deliberate fouls in all areas of the pitch are body-contact fouls (13 out of 24 in the analysis) and things have moved beyond obvious charges and trips. Two/three player fouls are not uncommon. Typically the first player will nudge an attacker off balance just before the second player engages and wins the tackle. Bumping the running player into a static defender is also common as is two players coralling a running attacker into a third static defender.

Other innovations come in the area of stick fouls. Poke tackles just behind the ball/stick have the effect of lifting the attacker’s stick off the ball just before a second tackler comes in (number 6 on the diagram). The stick is also being placed across the legs/feet of ball carriers to prevent them turning – although, to be fair, many defenders would regard this as legitimate play (11 and 3 are good examples).

Of particular concern is the knocking down of players after they release the ball. This has the effect of eliminating them from taking any further part in the attack. This is rarely seen/punished as the attacking team generally retains the ball and the officials are keen to allow play to go on. Knocking players down prevents them from receiving a return pass and creating a dangerous situation for the defence. Examples of this are 10 and 13.

Deliberate clumsiness is another area of innovation. A poke-style tackle (if a tackle was ever the intention) can be followed through with the body contact put down to mis-timing (number 4). A particularly clever innovation is to trip yourself up and fall on to a player in possession. This is rarely penalised and if it is, it’s a good way of conceding a PC rather than a stroke in the circle.

Umpires are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to all this fouling. On one hand, they have been under pressure for some time to be less fussy and let the

game flow in the name of entertainment. While on the other players are ever more willing to foul and to do it in ever more creative ways.

Paco Vazquez, the Spanish umpire at the German end in the first half, was clearly keen to let the game flow. And the players repeatedly took advantage of this to indulge in minor fouls which left the ball carrier slightly off-balance and vulnerable to the next challenge, or in less control of the pass they wished to make. In the second half, Argentine umpire German Montes de Oca umpired at the German end. He produced a green card early and the fouling rapidly dropped off – further evidence that fouls are tactical choice rather than just unfortunate accidents.

Pressure on umpires to produce un-fussy officiating explains some of the increased foul play, but there is also some lowest-common-denominator thinking going on. Australia, for all their size and strength, were a pretty fair team at London 2012. The emphasis was on making clean tackles to win good possession and then move the ball far and fast for their athletic players to take advantage of open spaces on the field. After the London 2012 Olympic semi-final, when they were constantly broken down by Germany (who won 4-2), Australia have joined the party and are taking physical contact to a whole new level. Their World Cup final 6-1 demolition of Holland included around 30 deliberate fouls, for example. And their 6-0 Commonwealth Games pool game win against South Africa on July 28 rates as one of the best wrestling contests of the Games.

In this race to the bottom, distinctive national flavours of fouling are developing. Germany like knocking people over. Australia like to obstruct and delay the ball carrier, USA women like to nudge players off-balance and cross-check with sticks – and there are many other styles out there. Only the Dutch seem to be going against the trend at the moment. But after that men’s World Cup final drubbing from the Kookaburras, they may well re-think their ‘beautiful game’.

So does this matter? Hockey has evolved rapidly in the Astroturf era and to some extent this is just part of the progression. There is a lot to admire about the physical challenges of hockey and the TV viewers who are used to watching football would see nothing too remarkable about the physical contact in our game. But hockey has always been, fundamentally, a stick-and-ball game won through skill. And it is fast and skilful players who are particularly vulnerable to deliberate fouling. Belgium’s Tom Boon, for example, was continually bumped over in this game. Including one particularly dangerous shoulder charge (22) off the ball.

There is a danger that hockey will become a game dominated by strength rather than by skill. I for one think that would be a shame.

Thanks to Derek Pappas for the idea for this article and much of the research.

inBrief...

Take it to the MaxHOLLAND: Netherlands have appointed Max Caldas as their national men’s hockey coach after deciding not to renew the contract of Paul van Ass following the nation’s second-place finish in the 2014 World Cup.

Caldas, Argentinian by birth, took charge of the Dutch women’s side after the 2010 World Cup and coached them to gold at the 2014 World Cup, adding to the gold won two years earlier in the London Olympic Games. He has been appointed to the men’s position for the two-year period up to and including the Rio Olympics.

Sjoerd Marijne, current coach of Den Bosch men in the Hoofdklasse, replaces Caldas in the women’s post. Marijne played in the Den Bosch men’s side that won the European Club Champions Cup in 1999, but has never played international hockey. The 40-year-old’s coaching career began with MOP in 2001.

Go their own way GERMANY: The German Bundesliga will revert to ‘classic’ six-a-side indoor hockey for the 2014-15 indoor season, despite the International Hockey Federation (FIH) decision to retain the five-a-side indoor format first adopted in 2013.

The German Hockey Federation (DHB) submitted a long critique on the effect of the rule changes, in what is the top indoor league in the world, to the FIH. This followed widespread discontent amongst players, coaches and clubs.

The DHB regarded the FIH response, of a rule change limiting goalkeeper substitutions to two per game, as a case of damage limitation rather than a real solution. The DHB has also rejected that rule change and is reverting to the pre-2013 indoor rules .p

Players like Tom Boon are vulnerable

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