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The International Hockey Federation (FIH), in it’s another approach to make hockey more interesting, has decided to introduce the concept of penalty shootout in place of penalty stroke to determine the winner in a classification match if the match ends without any result. FIH plans to introduce the new rule in the Women’s Champions Challenge 2, which is going to be held in Vienna from 7th to 15th May.
end of penalty stroke?
The Difference:
In the present rule when a match ends in a tie, the fate is decided by penalty stroke. In a penalty stroke, one striker takes a shot at the goalkeeper keeping the ball at a distance of 6.4 m from the backline. In the new rule, it will be a bit more like open play. Here the striker will start with the ball from the 23 m line and the goalkeeper will be on the goalline. The attacker will have 8 seconds to display his skills and dodge past the goalkeeper to score a goal. FIH Competition committee has decided to take this new step from the next tournament as they felt it is replicates the real game situation better requires more skills.
The decision of FIH to change from penalty stroke to penalty shootout looks like a change for the better. Though, deciding the fate of a hardly fought match on the skill of an individual is not fully justified, still its way above penalty stroke. A penalty stroke depended a lot on luck of the striker and the goalkeeper than their skills of the game. In the new format, the striker will have the chance to show his skills and outplay the opponent defender within the given time. The goalkeeper will also have a better chance to attack the striker and save the team.
The system of penalty shootout has been in use in the Australian Hockey League since 2001 and in the Euro Hockey League since its emergence in 2007. But this is the first time such a rule is being implemented in the FIH tournaments and it is expected that it will be made permanent. If everything goes fine, in the 2012 Olympics we will see penalty shootout to determine the medallists in place of traditional penalty stroke.
The efforts of FIH in making Hockey more attractive do deserve some accolades. Their previous decisions to implement self pass on a free hit and 2-minute suspension on green card have been implemented worldwide and are accepted well by the players and viewers. FIH also plans to confirm the experimental rule about early breaking of line by a defender or attacker during penalty corner. In that case the players will have to go to the half way line. In another step, there is a plan to introduce a knock out phase after the league phase in the Champions Trophy and Champions Challenge to make the tournaments longer and more interesting.
