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.

So when I heard that the there was going to be a new penalty corner rule for this upcoming AHL, I thought to myself, here we go again.  To me the penalty corner is the highlight of a game of hockey.  It’s like someone having a shot for goal in AFL, it’s like a free kick outside the box in soccer.  It’s a moment of the game that gets people on the edge of their seats because it’s a moment that can influence the outcome of the game.  Now the excitement and spectacle associated with a Penalty Corner has been removed! For AHL season 2010, the penalty corner will be a 4 vs 3 (including Goal Keeper) with the ball having to travel outside the 23 metre line and then it’s normal field play from their with the attackers obviously having the number advantage.

I’ve heard various reasons for the change in this rule (am sure there’s more):

• for safety
• to reduce time wasting of defence having to put on protective equipment like masks and gloves, etc.
• for innovation

Whilst this rule may bring in one or more of the above points, if these are the reasons then there are other measures that can be brought in to address these issues. Like for safety, let’s make the shot have to go below the backboard, or that the ball has to be stopped dead, or maybe there needs to be a pass before the shot.  In terms of reducing time wastage, why don’t we get the umpire to stop the clock, or add a shot clock like basketball or the 30 second rule applied in Aussie Rules.  Lastly for innovation, well this really isn’t innovation. This rule has been changed previously where the ball had to come outside the 5 metre broken line circle before coming into play.  So its not really innovation, its just a re-hash of an old idea.  Of all the potential areas of innovation in the great game of hockey, why would we change the one part of the game that is a spectacle of the sport.

Rumour has it is that the FIH aren’t even looking at changing the penalty corner rule, then why are we?  Australia just won a world cup on our ability to score off of one.  I can remember riding the ball from the edge of my seast into the back of the net as it left Luke Doerner’s stick in the final.

Let’s just leave the game how it is and if we really need to look at changing rules, lets look at the rules that non-hockey people fail to understand and try and make it easier or more simple for these people to ensure that this great game of ours can be enjoyed by more.

This article was written by Olympic Gold medalist Travis Brooks and is reproduced with his permission from his website Brooks 24.

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2. Kookas to play for Bronze
3. Aussies out of World Cup

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 8:35 am and is filed under Guest Writers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.