Happy Friday!  I hope you’re gearing up for a great hockey weekend, getting started with this week’s Playbook.

In anticipation of the resumption of the Euro Hockey League finals that start next week, I have been rewatching last year’s games. Between these, especially the Men’s Final, and then the conclusion of World Cup Qualifying, it got me thinking about an increasing pattern I was witnessing in circle play and goal scoring.

The most obvious indicator of today’s discussion was on show in one of the FIH Magic Skill Awards from the World Cup Qualifying tournaments. I really loved the goal by Irish player Benjamin Walker. While the finish was certainly emphatic, the creativity and thinking by Ireland’s most exciting player of the tournament, Lewis Rowe, is what caught my eye. Let’s have a watch:

The cutback in the air from Lewis Rowe makes so much sense when you think about how these situations so often unfold. Attacking along the baseline, good defenders and the keeper, with their bodies and sticks low, likely cover all the passing options. So many times in this situation, a pass or cutback on the floor will be cut out and cleared away.

Playing the pass at waist height, in retrospect, is an obvious solution and is one that, at the top level, has been happening for a while but maybe is not taught at youth or lower levels as much. It’s much harder for the closer defenders to adjust their stick position from low to high and intercept this. For a forward at the back post, with more time to see the ball and also, potentially, training routines to give familiarity, this presents a great goal-scoring opportunity, which in this instance is taken with aplomb.

Circling back to last year’s EHL Men’s Final between Gantoise (BEL) and Bloemendaal (NED), the nature of the open play goals followed a similar pattern. Now, to be clear, this match was decided by the brilliance of Alexander Hendrickx from penalty corners. The best drag flicker in the world scored a hat-trick, which was the difference between the teams.

However, there were 4 other open play goals in the game that were the result of lifted passes either into or within the circle.

A consistent theme of this newsletter has been the regularity of open play goals from shooting within the backspace. I think the other dominant pattern in open play goal scoring during this period is the ball being in the air or bouncing.

The first open play goal, Gantoise’s second, comes from a slider cross from the left that is sent into the circle a couple of inches from the turf. This trajectory stops the Bloemendaal defender from controlling the ball properly and the goalkeeper from clearing it, as it slips off his pads. Eventually, the ball rolls loose and Guillaume Hellin scores a simple reverse stick finish.

The second open play goal, Bloemendaal’s first, comes from an aerial directly into the right edge of the circle, that is then crossed in on the bounce, lifted over a defender’s stick and volleyed into the net by Zach Wallace.

The third open play goal, Gantoise’s third, comes again from an aerial, this time from the right, that lands in the middle of the circle. The ball is brought down and shot; the deflection from the keeper takes the ball wide, but then there is again a lifted cross that is tipped in, off the ground, into the far corner.

And the last open play goal of the game, Bloemendaal’s second—which almost gets them back into this match—comes from a lifted first-time vertical pass, maybe 2–3 inches off the pitch. From the centre of the field towards the post, this pass is then deflected in.

What we see from all of these goals is the chaos and uncertainty created in the circle as the ball comes in either just a few inches from the turf or from a much greater height and continues bouncing. These situations are so much more chaotic than when the ball is flat on the floor, and invariably it is the attackers who benefit.

‍

Lifted or overhead circle entries seem to cause maximum chaos, and so that is where attacking teams can reap the benefit.