Field Hockey

The German men's field hockey team went Mötley Crüe on a cruise ship to celebrate their Olympic gold-medal victory, and now they owe roughly $630,000. 

Deadspin spots a remarkable story coming from TheLocal.de, which reports the group of men allegedly destroyed portions of a cruise ship to the tune of €500,000 (about $626,400). 

That, my friends, is what I call a party boat. 

Apparently, the team boarded the MS Deutschland shortly after beating the Netherlands field hockey squad on August 11. From there, champagne was imbibed and cigars were smoked. 

The company says holes were burned in the teak panelling of the casino, a broken pane of glass, and numerous stains from spilled drinks. But the most expensive aspect of the repairs will be docking the ship. 

The company states the ship is charged €75,000 for each day that it's docked, making simple repairs spiral out of control when it comes to cost. 

The team tried to make good by apologizing and sending over a signed hockey stick. Sounds pretty much like what any other sports teams would do in this situation. 

However, the report states the team was still hit with the half-million Euro bill.

A lawyer, Burkhard Benecken, explains dishing out the tab may not be as easy as you would think. 

It's simple. Whoever destroys a table must pay for it. But I doubt that in this case the liability for any physical damage can be assigned individually. That would have to have been assessed on site. Even the organizers are not automatically liable for the damage. You would have to prove the organization was at fault.

It seems the cruise ship may be stuck with one remarkable set of costs. The report states that if the shipping company does move forward with this, it may very well end up in court. 

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during this $630,000 party fiasco. 

This serves as a general warning to all you cruise ships out there. Don't rent to field hockey teams. Those boys are crazy. 

Follow me on Twitter for more drunken debacles. 

Follow @gabezal

As the days and minutes inch closer to the opening ceremonies in London this summer, the national outlook for the United States is very clear.

Yes, we all know about Phelps making history and the star-studded men’s basketball team that seems to tower over competition, but what about the other 34 sports?

The women’s field hockey team has been flying under the radar since 2008, when they finished eighth in the summer games.

So now, with a taste of success on the national stage, the women’s field hockey team is entering the Olympics looking to medal.

The women’s team will earn a medal in the games across the pond, and this is why.

Experience

Eleven of the women on the team participated in the 2008 Olympics, and 11 players are on the field for each team at a time.

Not to say that those 11 returners will all start, but the experience they bring from playing across the globe in China is intangible. These women know about jet lag, big crowds and big-time competition.

The ups and downs of the sport paired with the highs and lows of being an Olympic athlete can make the strongest athlete crumble.

These 11 returners, including Keli Smith-Puzo who has been on the women’s national team for 10 years, will help keep the team balanced both on and off the field.

Momentum

Adding on to a gold medal at the 2011 Pan-American games, the women’s national team has been gaining momentum since their eighth-place finish in 2008.  

Their gold at the Pan-American games last year is the team’s first ever gold in international competition.

Momentum is behind them.

Building off that gold, the women won two out of three games in Australia this past April, and they are continuing to gain confidence.

As July nears, the women are hoping to ride this success as far as possible—possibly to the gold medal game.

Following

England, and London especially, is the epicenter for field hockey.

The modern game of field hockey was formed in London in public school yards, and it is one of England’s strongest sports.

Their pitch for the summer is going to be bursting with color, with a blue and pink surface.

In America, field hockey has slowly gained popularity, and this may be the year that it catches. With the potential for serious success and the draw of a bright field and big crowds, the women’s field hockey can create a large following.

Most of the tickets for the field hockey competition have sold out already, and pending visits by the English Royal family will create the buzz needed for America to hop on the bandwagon.

Proximity

Four short years ago, athletes from all over the world traveled to China for the Olympic games.

Although it now seems impossible to “dig a hole to China” the point gets across, China is far away—very far away. Going across the world to compete on a high level is difficult.

Unfamiliar buildings, unfamiliar utensils (chop sticks?), unfamiliar food (“real” Chinese food) and unfamiliar people put athletes in a place that can seem far away from home.

But the English? They’re our brothers, sort of.

After the American Revolution we began to get along, plus the travel isn’t across the world. It’s across an ocean. This close proximity to the United States creates an advantage for most U.S. national teams, including women’s field hockey.

Except for different outlets, we speak the same language too—sort of.

Nonetheless, the proximity makes the travel less taxing and the culture less unusual.

Youth

Although 11 women on the team have been on it since 2008, 12 women haven’t.

Yes, young players can be raw or emotional, but any good team needs some of these qualities in small doses.

Some emotion and some raw talent, will bring a strong youth mix into the squad. A mix is exactly what the team is bringing over to London.

There is not one dominant age group on the team. Four women on the team were born after 1990.

1990!

These young women can bring a certain excitement that a wily old veteran may lack. These young players can be the secret to the U.S. Women’s Field Hockey Team gaining a medal in the Olympics this summer.

DJ Jenny D Is Provocatively Dissociative

What she said:

“Sensible people wouldn’t associate me with Poonam Pandey.”

Mumbai-based DJ Jenny will go nude to raise funds for the Indian national hockey team. Her decision comes in the wake of the uproar against a meagre Rs. 25,000 offered to the winners of Asian Champions Trophy. The Indian team beat Pakistan in the final to clinch the inaugural edition.

Jenny said:

There were stories of our hockey players not being able to afford the right footwear before the final. The measly prize money was only adding insult to injury. Compare this to the way cricketers are treated. The injustice is there for all to see. It’s a matter of serious concern.

A couple of portals have already approached me to buy the images. There’s also an international men’s magazine that has offered to pay me Rs. 10 lakh for a nude cover shoot that would have just three hockey sticks in the frame.

Jenny is aware that her mode of raising funds will draw critics like flies to uncovered jam:

There are bound to be critics but when you come across injustice, you shouldn’t consider detractors. People in India don’t want to get out of that traditional shell. They forget we are in the 21st century.

Jenny D previously posed nearly nude for a print campaign demanding reservation for women in the education and employment sectors.

What DJ Jenny really meant:

"Poonam Pandey's a cricket-crazy publicity hound. I'm a hockey sophisticate."

“The hockey team (and I) really need the attendant publicity. At least, that’s my argument.”

What DJ Jenny definitely didn’t:

“Let’s title the campaign ‘Sense, Sensibility and Hockey.’"

Rajpal Singh Is Victoriously Disgruntled

What he said:

“Hockey players do not have shoes to wear.”

Indian hockey team skipper, Rajpal Singh, is justifiably bitter about the treatment meted out to hockey players and other sportsmen. The proud Sikh was speaking to Gaurav Kanthwal of the Times Of India (TOI) News Network following the recent fiasco wherein returning triumphant players were offered a measly reward of Rs. 25,000 each for bringing home the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy.

In an earlier interview, the Indian captain slammed the revised prize money of Rs. 1.5 lakhs saying:

It was total injustice. It's not just about 18 to 20 players who go play hockey, it's about national pride, and they should have at least treated us well. Unless they encourage and motivate players, how can we promote the game? It's very disappointing. We ought to have been rewarded well... It was wrong and this is not the way to treat the national players. Such incentives will not only demotivate us.

Field hockey is the national sport of India.

Rajpal said:

Jab sponsorship ki baat hoti hain toh players ko pata hi nahi chalta hain ki kya ho raha hain. (When it comes to sponsorship, the players are clueless as to what’s happening.) Even when we travel abroad the sports authority of India spends and takes care of us. We wear sponsor shirts but, pata nahi kyun. Kuch nahi milta woh shirt pehenkar. (Nothing comes of wearing the sponsor’s shirt). Every player in the team's upset.

Rajpal added that the Indian hockey skipper is hardly recognised when compared to his cricketing counterpart, MS Dhoni:

Agar hum cricket ko compare kare,BCCI ko hatake aur government ki baat kare toh cricket ko bhi utna hi izzat deti jitna hockey ko. (The government should give equal importance to hockey). But when they won the World Cup, then every state government facilitated (sic) their captain. Main apni baat nahi kah raha hoon, lekin hockey team ke captain ko kabhi bhi Dhoni ki tarah dekha nahi jaata hain. (I am not referring to myself but no hockey captain is adulated like Dhoni).

What Rajpal really meant:

“Rs, 25,000 can buy no more than two pairs of decent sports shoes. There are no real sponsors.”

“I wish the BCCI were running Indian hockey. They’d monetise everything.”

“We’re playing hockey, not hooky.”

What Rajpal definitely didn’t:

“It kind of reminds me of the glorious Indian past when our predecessors played barefoot.”

On Nov. 22 at Wake Forest University, the Maryland Terrapins and the North Carolina Tar Heels competed in a field hockey championship that will go down in history.

Coming into the game Maryland was ranked No. 1 and was undefeated with a 23-0 record.  UNC, on the other hand, was the third seed in the tournament and had lost two games (19-2) prior to the championship matchup.

The first half was scoreless and, remarkably, this hard fought battle saw four of the last five goals scored in the final 10 minutes!

In the 43rd minute of the game, Terrapin Nicole Muracco scored Maryland's first goal during a two-on-one breakaway. 

The next goal was scored by UNC's Dani Forword on a pass form Melanie Brill and with that, the game was tied. 

Maryland answered with another tally less than two minutes later.  On a penalty corner, Megan Frazer snagged a rebound and put it past Tar Heel goalkeeper Jackie Kintzer.  The Terps were up 2-1 with 7:49 remaining in the game. 

At this point UNC called a timeout and pulled their goalie, allowing them to place another field player on the field (think ice hockey if you're not familiar with the rules of field hockey). 

"In a national championship game, you've got to risk," Shelton said.  This risk paid off. Big time.

Only three minutes later, Illse Davids received a pass from Katelyn Falgowski and scored on a reverse stick shot from the top of the circle.

The score was now tied, 2-2, with less than five minutes remaining in regulation and both teams now desperate for a goal. 

With 11.7 seconds remaining on the clock, UNC drew a penalty corner.  As the Tar Heels lined up at the top of the circle, “Melanie Brill on my left just kept repeating out loud, ‘I believe in you, I believe in you, I believe in you,'" said Dani Forword.

With the game on the line, Forword scored, leading her UNC Tar Heels to their sixth national championship and defeating the No. 1 ranked Maryland Terrapins.

Check out the scoring highlights and the celebration after the win!   Wait for the video to load, it's worth it!

Okay, I'm going to say this right now.  I've never played or even watched field hockey.  I'm sure it's as fun as lacrosse.  Anyways, I was looking through the Olympic news on Yahoo! and I came across this weird piece of news.  I couldn't help but laugh and write about it on the B/R.

If you don't like articles dealing with undergarments, exit now.  You've been warned.

Like any other sport, field hockey has a dress code, and that dress code includes everything from the shirt to the underwear.  Yes, I said the underwear.  That little piece of clothing...never mind.

According to Olympic field hockey rules, a player's underwear must match the player's shorts.  That means if someone wears red shorts they have to wear red underwear and yadda yadda yadda. 

Yesterday the coach for the New Zealand men's field hockey team was ejected from the game against Germany because officials had noticed that his players had not been wearing matching underwear in an earlier match against China (a match in which they drew 2-2).

The players had been wearing black undies with their white shorts.  Apparently, Team New Zealand does not own a single pair of white undies. 

Initially the IOC had wanted to suspend Bradley Shaw, Simon Child, and Blair Hopping. Coach Kevin Marr, however, was able to plead their case and got himself ejected from the match instead.

Marr told NZPA: "They are trying to ensure teams present themselves in the best possible light. I understand where the rule comes from but to suspend players is wrong.”

When New Zealand played Germany yesterday, they wore their black undies and shorts to avoid another ejection or suspension.  Germany beat New Zealand 3-1 to advance to the semifinals. 

Now it was Germany that had the problems.  In one of their earlier matches, Germany wore their red shorts but none of the players owned a pair of red undies.  New Zealand coach Marr noticed the difference but was contacted by the German coach who said that his players were threatened with suspension if they did not get red underwear for the next time. 

After the incident, the IOC issued a warning to all field hockey teams to wear matching underwear and shorts. 

I can't help but laugh at this ridiculous series of events.  The rules that some sports have are hilarious.

What do you think?  Is this a fair rule?  Does the IOC need to change their policy?

The greatest sport is obviously something that is completely opinion-based and is probably impossible to agree on.

I’m not saying that I think everyone agrees with me, but I'll give my reasons as to why I think field hockey should be everybody’s favourite sport and leave it open to the jury.

I'll start by explaining why I rule out other sports before going into more specific detail about why field hockey is great. 

The best sports for the masses to enjoy are the simplest ones—those in which the aim of the game is simply to get the ball into a net or to the other side of the pitch. Everyone understands this and immediately knows what is happening in the match and what everybody is trying to do.

(Having said this, my other favourite sport is cricket, which does not fit into this category.)

Racing sports are a little too one-dimensional and racket sports also lack the variety of team sports, leaving few other forms of sport to be the greatest. The simple sports that I can think of that fit into this category are football, American football, Aussie rules, rugby, handball, netball, basketball, and hockey (ice and field).

The next thing that makes a game great is that scoring has to be special. Games where teams score every other minute demean the art of scoring and don’t give fans the joyful feeling that rare goals in low-scoring sports provide. This rules out basketball, netball, handball, and Aussie rules.

The next thing is that, like the aim, the game itself has to be simple. In football, everyone kicks a ball around; that's simple.

American football, on the other hand, stops and starts a lot, and uneducated people don’t understand that. The majority of players can’t touch the ball (What?!?) and everyone has a different role which most people will not be able to pick up on without others explaining it to them.

Therefore we are left with football, rugby, and hockey.

The next thing that is important is that the game needs to have an element of physicality. All four of these sports are physical. Rugby can be brutal. Football and field hockey are based on endurance and speed, with the added odd collision.

Field hockey also has the hardest sports ball in use, to which my broken eye socket can attest. Ice hockey has more than enough contact in it and also has very quick gameplay.

The next important factor is that games need to be skill-based. This rules out rugby, as throwing and catching a ball aren’t particularly difficult, even when doing it whilst running quickly.

Ice hockey isn’t highly skill-based either, aside from the skating. Large stick blades make controlling the puck easy. Using both sides of the stick makes puck manipulation easy and the fact that the goals are so small, and the keepers so big in comparison, shows that scoring isn’t that difficult, given the amount of goals scored.

This leaves only football and field hockey. Football is a very skill-based, touch sport, and field hockey is perhaps the most difficult of sports to master all the skills involved.

These two sports are very similar in theory but with vastly different popularity and amounts of viewers. Football is obviously a bigger game but I feel the differences should be in favour of field hockey.

The distinction between the two sports is based on one major fact—that there is no long ball option in Junior Hockey. This is brought about because the aerial ball in field hockey is a very difficult skill to master when having just started playing. This means that all players are encouraged to pass the ball along the ground to one another.

This may sound exceedingly basic but I remember Junior Football, which involved getting the ball at the back and thumping it up field over as many of the opposition’s heads as possible. No one ever passed the ball up field at a beginners level.

This means that as field hockey players get older, they have had more experience playing good passing hockey and therefore play with a better technical ability than footballers do.

This leads to better retention of the ball (along with less sloppy play) and therefore more organised and attractive team moves. Also, the small, hard ball moves more quickly than a football which aids fast passing as long as control of the ball is good.

The second important difference is that there is no offside rule in hockey, which leads to the play being more spread out. This leads to quicker and more deliberate passing—not passing just to keep possession, but to manipulate the ball to a position best for the next attempted attack.

Defenders are key to starting up attacks with their quick switching passes, showing that all the players have this technical ability whereas in football a lot of defenders' possession is purely to keep possession and slow down play.

Additionally, footballers frequently still lump the ball up to the strikers in a direct manner instead of the more cultured hockey moves.

The restriction of not being able to score from outside the D also adds to the enforced ability to work the ball around cleverly to produce an opening and forces teams to have to take the opportunity quickly and precisely when one does occur.

Admittedly, long-range shots are great to watch in football. But the overall clever movement in hockey and the well-worked goals often ending in pre-planned, deft deflections are very easy on the eye and would be highlighted in a football match in a very positive manner.

Lastly, the rules of field hockey are mainly there to aid the flow of the game more so than in football (although safety is the key theme throughout the rule book). This is so that there is as little stopping and starting as possible during matches.

The playing of advantages is of major importance to umpires because it allows the game to flow. The fact that play doesn’t have to start exactly where fouls occurred gives more fluidity to the games by minimising stopped play.

The cards system works better than football’s, as there are fewer breaks of play due to players abusing officials.

The warning card and sin bin system calm players down to give officials more respect. And with respect for officials comes players concentrating more on the quality and getting on with the game.

I doubt hockey will ever reverse the popularities of these two sports, but I'd like a lot of people to watch the upcoming hockey at the Olympics and appreciate how skillful and technically excellent the games are. After this, I'd like people to keep an interest in the sport and help give it as strong a following as it can possibly get.