The following article by Martin Conlon looks at the relationship between an attacking player who is intent on shielding of the ball as a means to preventing an opponent from dispossessing them and the obstruction rule which has been established to prevent the attacker from achieving his or her desired outcome. It is good reading for umpires and players who are seeking to establish the legitimacy about shielding the ball.
MARTIN CONLON: If it was not in any circumstances permitted by Rule to shield the ball from an opponent, by positioning the body between that opponent and the ball, the playing of hockey in a legitimate way would be an impossibility. Yet we have: –
RULE 9.12 Players must not obstruct an opponent who is attempting to play the ball.
Players obstruct if they :
– shield the ball from a legitimate tackle with their stick or any part of their body. A player with the ball is permitted to move off with it in any direction except bodily into an opponent or into a position between the ball and an opponent who is within playing distance of the ball and attempting to play it. (Martin’s underlining)
We have three conditions which can be reasonably deduced from the Rule statement for there to be an obstruction offence
1) an opponent must be within the distance at which he or she could play directly at the ball were the body or stick of the player in possession not imposed between him or her and the ball.
2) a legal attempt to play at the ball must be made (no physical contact) – and
3) a tackle attempt is prevented only because the ball is shielded from the tackler (making a legal tackle impossible).
There is an oddity there; the requirement for a legitimate (legal) tackle attempt when a legal tackle may be an impossibility because the ball is shielded from the player intent on tackling, is a conundrum, but discussion about obstructive ball shielding has stumbled to a stop or become circular (and antagonistic) so often on that point, that the conditions in which a player in possession of the ball can legitimately be positioned between an opponent who is within his or her playing distance of the ball and intent on tackling for it, has seldom been explored – and exploration of what is (traditionally) accepted (by common sense) is necessary in this area because the wording of the Rule, on this point, is of no help at all.
Legitimately being positioned between the ball and an opponent, who is attempting or intent tackling for it, is possible in two ways, which may be described under the headings ‘Orientation’ and ‘Speed and acceleration’.
Orientation.
Orientation is of three kinds. The orientation of a player in possession of the ball to
1) The ball – the ball being to the front or rear of the feet and to one side of the body or the other
2) The goals – his or her own goal and the opponent’s goal.
3) Opponents – opponents being their own goal-side or opposition goal-side of the ball and the ball-holder and also (less importantly) to the left or right of the player in possession of the ball. I will leave orientation there, despite it needing a great deal of further careful explanation if the Rule is to be properly and fairly applied. I have never seen anything that has been written about the vital of importance of these orientations vis-a-vis the Obstruction Rule, perhaps there isn’t anything. I wonder how this information is coached – particularly to umpires?
Speed and acceleration.
Even when within playing distance of the ball, a player intent on tackling for it may not be able to do so because the ball holder is moving as fast as the intending tackler is in a given direction, or even faster, the ball-holder accelerating away from the tackler – this is especially so when the tackler has had to make a change of direction (because the ball holder has changed the direction in which the ball is being moved), thus slowing and then trying and catch-up with the ball-holder again.
There is example of this in the video below.
The first defender moves first in one direction and then another in an attempt to position where he can play at the ball, but does not succeed – and that is not because the ball was shielded from him but because he could not catch up or was not in a balanced position, a position from which he could make a tackle attempt, when he was within playing distance of the ball.
The second defender tries to catch up with the ball-holder to make a tackle and may have positioned where he could have done so just before the ball was struck – when it was momentarily shielded from him by the body of the striker – but the striker made space to make the shot by his speed of movement to his left, not by ‘virtue’ of shunting the ball past an in position defender while shielding the ball from him and only by that means preventing a tackle attempt (as was the case with the Belgium attacker in the earlier example shown in the video). Despite the commentator’s enthusiastic praise of a ‘perfect example of using the body to shield the ball’, the footwork of the striker as he adjusted position to make the strike at the ball caused only a split-second of ball shielding (which did not prevent a tackle attempt from the just out of range defender) and was ‘a million miles’ from the deliberate near static use of the body, to block off of opponents, the German defender engaged in earlier in the match.
Ball shielding with the body with the effect of preventing an (on-side) opponent from playing directly at the ball when he or she is trying to do so and when the ball could otherwise have been played at, is a foul called obstruction. I may be (am) an old fuddy-duddy who deplores the ignoring of the Obstruction Rule and what has developed from that (static ball shielding, ‘crabbing’ etc. etc.), but I do recognize the importance and desirability of players being able to move to the left with the ball and to strike it from their left side, just as it can be moved to the right and be hit from the right side of the body. But if obstruction (ball shielding), when it occurs, is going to be ignored, then the Obstruction Rule needs to be changed to reflect that, perhaps making obstruction in field hockey identical to obstruction in soccer – basically only ‘third-party’. That is what the Rule was in the beginning (a player being penalised for running between an opponent and the ball). However, the fact that a Rule prohibiting ball shielding developed is probably a good indication that such a Rule is needed to play the game in a fair way. What I really deplore is the hypocrisy of ‘interpretation’ that enables a Rule to be ignored, together with the pretence (even the insistence) that it is still enforced.
I am, by the way, bewildered that we still have a ‘back-sticks’ Rule (which is rigorously enforced – when seen) when it was circumvented many years ago by the introduction of edge-hitting – which was in fact introduced for just that reason – another hypocrisy – and then following edge-hitting we have the ‘accidentally’ intentionally raised hit – another hypocrisy. Hockey is a game, it, like all other games, has little or no important, it ‘means’ nothing ; it’s only a ‘relaxation’ or an entertainment, that is why it is called a game. When something as trivial (and as vital) as a game cannot be played to the agreed Rules (the ones in the rule-book – or why have a rule-book at all?) then there is no point to our having Rules or even organised games (and little hope for our civilizations)
Martin’s article provides an avenue for further discussion. Have your say?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THIS ARTICLE
The author is Martin Conlon. A former player (Blackheath HC , Slough HC, Hounslow HC, Surbiton HC, Maidenhead HC, and Lusitanians) former umpire (Surrey Umpires Association), former hockey coach (Cuba to Junior World Cup and Pan American Games.
https://martinzigzag.wordpress.com
