By Travis Brooks

Over the years I’ve seen heaps of rules come in for the Australian Hockey League.  From changing the location of long corner free hits to having 1 vs 1 with a Goal Keeper awarded instead of a stroke, there’s been plenty of ‘experimental’ rules introduced.  The funny thing is, out of all the experimental rules that have been introduced, from the best of my memory and I’m happy to stand corrected, not one of them has been introduced as an FIH rule.  Then why do we keep doing it?

I look at the setup in Europe with the hoofdeklasse in Holland and the European Hockey League that is now the premier competition in the world, and notice that they never toy with the rules of the game.  People love watching the pure form of the game and when you’ve got tv rights, major sponsors for the competition and individual teams, you’ve got to admit that maybe they are doing something right.

But here in Australia, we struggle to get people to an AHL game, infact I’ve played in front of bigger crowds at club matches than what was present at some AHL games.  We also continue to change rules so that those new to the game or even ‘veteran’ players/watchers of the game, come along and spend the first half of the game confused as to the rules that are being applied.

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By Travis Brooks

A common question I get asked is how do you teach someone to hit a hockey ball? “Should we teach them Australian style or should we teach them European style?”

What’s the difference you may well ask? Europeans are a lot lower then they hit the ball. If you envision more of a baseball type swing with the player standing further away from the ball, the swing is more in a rounded type motion. Australian style on the other hand is the basic opposite of this, the player’s front foot is a lot closer when addressing the ball to hit and the swinging motion is more of an up and down type motion. As cricket is a huge sport here in Australia, I believe that is where we come to develop our technique for hitting the ball, its more like a cricket ‘drive’ than a baseballer’s swing as outlined when describing the European style above.

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