Field Hockey World Cup 2014 Professional Foul Study

1. PLANET HOCKEY PLANET HOCKEY
(bothhalves)
body/body
stick/stick
stick/body
other
Green card
Germany
18
17
16
13
12
20
217
10
23
24
4
2
19
10
8
14
6
5 22
15
11
3
1
PC
PC - Goal
PC - Goal
ANALYSIS
Fair play or foul?
Deliberate fouling has become just part of the game
O
ne 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 video
See 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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2. PLANET HOCKEY
hockeyimages.co.uk
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 Max
HOLLAND: 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
hockeyimages.co.uk
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