International Hockey Federation (FIH) on Saturday made it clear that it has no intention to tinker with 11-a-side format at the Olympics or World Cup.
Talking to media persons in New Delhi at the end of the 46th FIH Congress, Its CEO Thierry Weil said “ The FIH will start five-a-side exhibition games from next year. It plays a very important role in spreading the game. Instead of bringing people to the game, the game can be taken to the people in the centre of a city in the shorter format. But, we are very clear that it will not replace 11-a-side, that is played in Olympics and it will stay there,”
He also dispelled the notion that the World body always insists that matches be played only on the Astroturf “The FIH will encourage the matches to be played and the game on all kinds of surfaces at the grassroots to bring more nations into the hockey fold.”
“Hockey can be played on mud, grass, gravel – of course, once you go higher, there has to be a standard surface to provide all teams with a level playing field. But, you can start off anywhere, even the streets”
Further elaborating Weil said that while international hockey at the highest level would continue to be played on artificial turf, the FIH was in talks with manufacturers and suppliers to develop a surface that would not consume water. The current surface requires constant watering to allow a smooth game and avoid injuries.
“We are looking to achieve this by the Paris Olympics in 2024, but try and do it much earlier, develop a surface close to the quality we have right now on turf with water. It will have to be a combination of turf, ball and footwear, but we cannot continue to put all this water on turf when people next door may not have enough to drink,” he said.
Weil also informed that Vanuatu had played a five-a-side competition as part of the Hockey Series Open – the first stage in the Olympic qualifiers. “A party played five-a-side in Vanuatu but these are really small islands. Once they qualify for the next level, then they will have to play 11-a-side,”
“The two can easily co-exist. Especially for the smaller countries, it is extremely important, they can take only nine players instead of 22, the cost of travel and training is also less. Five-a-side allows more teams to participate and that is our way to encourage more teams, as can be seen from the fact that Vanuatu had a hockey team at Youth Olympics,” added FIH president Narinder Batra .
The FIH also launched its new development strategy –‘Hockey2024’ –and Weil explained “The development of the game is the number one mission of every International Federation.
“The revenues we generate as a Federation have only one goal: to develop hockey worldwide. I’m delighted that Congress has fully supported the strategy which the FIH has presented today in this crucially important area. This shall help our goal to grow the game on a sustainable manner.” He said
The congress also elected four Ordinary Members– two women and two men – Maureen Craig-Rousseau (Trinidad & Tobago), Elizabeth Safoa King (Ghana), Michael Green (Germany) and Shahbaz Ahmad (Pakistan) to its executive board
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TV and Broadcast Director Andy Oram announced the 2019 launch of the ‘FIH.live’ platform. The focus of the platform will be ‘athlete first’, enabling us to share the best moments of every player in every team instantly live on social media and guarantees global visibility to all hockey matches played worldwide