Live Q&A #WhatUpWednesday Ep. 125

📅 Aug 2 18.00 GMT
➡️ YouTube

Did you hear about a mysterious one-page doc on FIH letterhead announcing a potential rules trial for the penalty corner? Are you panicking because you don't know what to do? Relax, we've got you covered.

Join us for an in-depth exploration of what we know and more importantly, what we don't know about the latest plan coming out of the FIH. Then, we'll check out an Instagram aerial that caught the imagination of so many commenters, and What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Which Included May Have Included Umpire Managing Because I Know How To Take A Break).

See you there!

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Check out when the next #WhatUpWednesday will go live.

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Transcript

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[00:02:41] What Up Wednesday? Hello, we're back. Good to see you all. I am feeling, I'd like to say I'm feeling rested, but let's face it. I was in under 18 nationals last week and it was a thing. It was a thing. So… it was awesome though. Awesome fun. I will talk about that later, but this is what we're going through this week.

[00:03:02] There was just like a minor thing that came out, like nobody really cared. Totally flew under the radar. Zero discussion on social media about it. This is what we're gonna be looking at. The PC rule trial, question mark? That Ariel, you know, there's, there was one and how to summer holiday. That's basically what we're going to talk about.

[00:03:26] I hope you guys have been good. I've missed you all. It's been really weird to be off. So yeah, just the three topics today. And like, you know, basically we're going to talk the whole time about the first topic and then see what happens for the rest. You know how it's going to go. Um, yes, thank you very much.

[00:03:44] I am trying some things out to help with my migraine issues. It seems that this show is like really, really intense for me. So I'm going to try to do this with, I got a few experiments to conduct. I'm just saying, it's good to have you. And I want to give a welcome to, I believe. A new friend, uh, Rakesh, very warm welcome and a DJ air horn for you, sir.

[00:04:12] I'm glad you're here. And let's see, I've seen Ad, Mr. Selwood's here. Um, it's, it's a holiday. There you go. Good to see everybody. Uh, are we rested or rusted? I don't have a chance to ever get rusty. It's just non. Stop, but there you go. Okay. Let's get into all the things that,

[00:04:40] I tell ya. Is it, okay, let's just, let's just go. The PC rule trial.

[00:04:52] Okay. I'm going to talk about my feelings a little bit about a few things on this here topic, and I want to preface all of this with the fact that I feel like there's an essential piece of information that we're all missing, which is actual injury rates from penalty corners. So I'm not sure exactly how dangerous penalty corners are.

[00:05:20] I know what my lifetime experience has been. I know of the probably, I'm going to say almost around 2000 international matches that I've watched or participated in, watched live, watch live streams, watch from the reserve chair, all that kind of stuff, all the club matches that I've been a part of as a player, as a coach, as an umpire.

[00:05:51] All the high performance matches I've been a part of playing for Alberta or my university, everything that I've witnessed does not convince me that we have a massive problem, but let's consider, let's give ourselves the opportunity to consider that preventing somebody from suffering a traumatic, perhaps fatal injury,

[00:06:17] in the future might not be a terrible thing. Okay. So I want to do all of this within the lens of this is worth pursuing because a lot of people aren't interested in even pursuing it. And for the purists out there who hate rule changes, who think the penalty corner is sacrosanct. And should never be touched and it's the essential part of our game or anything like that, get over it.

[00:06:49] Life is full of change. Life is full of, I mean, I don't even know if our sport's going to be here in 10 years, nevermind anything else. Sorry. I'm trying to turn on some music to soothe me as I go through all this. We don't even know if the planet's going to be here in 10 years. So I think we all can just let go of our preciousness about something that we feel is so important to the game.

[00:07:18] I will also share that my personal feelings about penalty corners as they are today is I don't like them. They are overly intricate as an umpire to umpire. There are more rules in section 13 in all those sub clauses than there are actual other rules in the rule book. There are dozens. Of little sub clauses that we as umpires need to know that end up being the subject of video referrals at the top level.

[00:07:44] And they are just places where we have to make very, very fine decisions that are difficult to do correctly. And as much as I love umpire shaping the game and contributing to the awesomeness that is out there, I don't think loading us up on all of these fine details. It's just a good use of time and resources when what we should be doing is keeping players basically safe.

[00:08:17] We should be managing the temper and the tempo and the spirit of the game in which it's being played rather than did the ball, you know, cross this line the second time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I don't like drag flicks. I just don't, I think they're boring. Okay. I can appreciate the skill that goes into them, but one of the things, one of the ways in which our game has been moving over the last 40 years, almost that I've been involved in it is less and less specialization and more of the excelling generalist players at the top level play on every line of the field.

[00:09:01] You can take a forward and plunk them in the back and they're going to be pretty good. You can take a back and put them on forward and they can also be excellent there. And they mix lines because that is part of just better fluid attacking play and better structured offensively. We had a rule where we had the ability back in the day, Callum, congratulations, one of the few people who I think can honestly say that he was single-handedly responsible for a rule change.

[00:09:34] Uh, we had a rule where a player could sub in for a penalty corner and they could flick, they could drag flick and the FIH went, you know what? That kind of sucks. We like people being able to do all kinds of roles on the pitch. So let's get rid of that. No substitutions. Once the penalty corner has been called, despite that rule, there's still an exceeding number of penalty corner specialists, drag flicks specialists who teams managed to hide them around.

[00:10:10] And I mean, this is no shade against any of the names that I might mention. Because they are still exceptionally amazing players, but people don't say that Alex Hendricks is one of the best field players in the world. He is one of the best drag flickers. Payette, not one of the best defenders in the world.

[00:10:31] They put him on left D that's where I played and. He does, he does really, really well for almost every, every level at all, but he is a drag flick specialist. So they're still able to find ways to do that. And the thing about the drag flick is that it isn't present anywhere else in the game. It is not a skill that you see exhibited by, it's not even an aerial.

[00:10:59] It's not. Any other kind of, you can't take that shot at any other time. It's not a one on one attacking move. It's not a defending drill. It is literally only there for the penalty corner. So I'm just kind of not a fan of it. Even though I personally was the kind of player who deeply benefited from being very specialist and having a very special set of skills, I kind of sucked.

[00:11:26] And I don't think that that's something that we really need to go down the road of. Okay. But what we need is to understand here. Let me see if I can, uh, turn up the music a little bit. Cause I can now see that it's there. Whatever. You can't hear the music, but I can. That's the most important thing. I'm on a roll here guys.

[00:11:52] And now I've lost my train of thought, but with all those things in mind, where we are is in a position where this is a valid discussion to have

[00:12:10] that said. I'm not a fan of this rule trial and we can get into it in a little bit. But before I do, before we get into the actual details of all of that sort of thing, uh, no effects whatsoever. Okay. I won't, I won't do anything like that. Um, won't do any more sound effects, but the. The clips that I have should work very well.

[00:12:33] And good to see you, Jay. Of course, Rakesh. I'm glad you're here. Um, Anthony, I think you're new too. Brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr. That's all I got.

[00:12:49] I appreciate that. Okay. Um, Seb, let's see. You're saying that, uh, penalty corner defense injuries happen most at lower level hockey where players aren't required to wear proper protection.

[00:13:04] And here's the problem. Again, Seb, may I call you Seb? Instead of. Sub F day, that is probably very true and reflective of your experience, your personal experience, just as I described mine. However, that may not be statistically, uh, the experience. We don't know. We don't know. Let's see. Oh, sorry. There you go.

[00:13:34] Um, and Rakesh, this new rule change will make PC takers, the chance of scoring goals will be very low. So talking about the goal conversions, I agree with that. And I'll get into that in a sec. Um, for England hockey, Seb's saying they selected the fast injectors, trappers and drag flickers, no matter of their pitch performance.

[00:13:57] Yeah, that's no good. That's no good. Um, let's see. Um, I, yes, you have, you know, y'all sassin me about my fashion choices, you know, there's not a lot out here in these streets that I get to have a lot of fun with, but I got my eyes checked and we're dealing with some migraine stuff and I think they're cute, okay?

[00:14:25] You can't go yet. Nope. Because I need you in a second. Cause you're, you might, you might vociferously, vociferously argue with some of the things that I have to say. Now, where are we? Here's some context. Okay. This is what I understand to be the underlying things underneath this particular trial that were not shared with the general public, I guess.

[00:14:54] And, and that was one of the things that really kind of pissed me off about how this whole thing leaked out, because what was sent out to the National Associations and the Continental Federations was a three page document, and only one of those pages was leaked out by somebody at one of the National Associations, and I'm not going to blame anybody in particular, but I'm thinking that maybe we know where it may have come from, leaked that out onto social media without anything whatsoever.

[00:15:24] And I'm going to first say. The FIH bears a little bit of responsibility with this because they should not have released just a trial without all of the other contextual information that might've been leaked to me later. But I also think whoever leaked that, you're kind of an asshole because the resulting reaction was

[00:15:52] vociferous, it was confused. It took everything that the hockey public had and just, just, just little, little, uh, uh, a match and threw it on a gasoline fire. And just like my GIF on Twitter, Mary J. Blige is walking away from an explosion behind her like a boss. And that's really cool for Hollywood, but it's not good for us as people.

[00:16:16] Because we had a whole bunch of discussion. And like I said there, when something like that happens, it makes me think either somebody is really looking for attention or somebody is trying to sabotage this. And maybe it's not worthy. Maybe it's not a good rules trial, but that's not how we should be doing things as professionals in the sport.

[00:16:38] Stop treating this like this is like some power play of, Oh my God, this isn't what we want. So we're going to try to screw it before it even happens. Like, come on, people grow up.

[00:16:52] And just, that's my first rant of the day. There will be many. So as you may be aware, the FIH did send out a survey and they pushed it everywhere last year. They tried to get as much engagement and as many responses as they possibly could on this survey. And this is what they ended up with 4, 700 respondents came back to them thereabouts.

[00:17:21] And of those respondents, 75% were players. And the vast majority of those players were club players, because that's just true. Generally 95% of the players in the world are at the club level. That's why it's called elite and the rest of us, right? Of those respondents. It was evenly split between the opinions of these people, none of whom had statistics, just had their own anecdotal experiences, evenly split between whether they felt that the penalty corner was too dangerous, or it struck the right balance between spectacle and risk.

[00:18:06] Also evenly split were the respondents opinions as to whether the rules should be changed or not. I know personally, when I responded to it, I said, I think it's got the right balance just because in my anecdotal experience, I hadn't seen a lot of injuries, but I also want the rule change because I hate drag flicks.

[00:18:25] And I'm just not interested. I'm not interested in what we have to do as umpires at that point. I want us to umpire hockey. General skill hockey, players playing against each other instead of that. Okay.

[00:18:41] So they want this one year trial period between August of this year and May of next year, 2024. And what they're trying to gather are the goal conversion rates and injuries, injury rates, and the types of injuries that occur, they want to see canvassed junior, senior masters and all genders. I use the word all, they use the word both, bite it. And they need a comparison set from the same grouping. So ideally, for example, if you were trying this at a under 18 level, they'd like to see if you're experimenting with. Boys hockey under 18 County level, or let's say provincial level in, in my area of the world, that there's a, competition that is doing the rules trial and a competition that is not. So you have data, super fun. Okay. And I think this is, you know, if you're going to gather data, this is how you do it, it makes sense. The next question that we have to consider. Now, and I'm going to come back to your comments and see where we're all at.

[00:20:06] Who does this affect? I had messages from friends of mine and I had people asking me at nationals and people who don't know really, who aren't really in touch with the sport saying, Oh, so what does this rule change come into effect? And like, it doesn't, this is not a rule change. This is a proposed trial put into the hands of the national associations and the continental federations to any extent that they could be making these decisions, but probably more advising their national associations. And then the national associations would go down to the various levels of competition and say, Hey, do you want to give this a try? Or we would like you to give this a try. And then for those jurisdictions, those particular city leagues, state leagues, county leagues, whatever performance structures to then say, all right, yeah, we're willing to try it.

[00:21:04] So does this affect you right now? Not in any way, shape, or form. So stop panicking, please. Just take it down a notch. Okay. The, uh, England hockey has come out with their own statement and said, we're not doing this. None of us are doing this for 2023-2024, which means that it's not, they're just not going to do any of the testing because that's the trial period that the, that the FIH is looking for, for this particular stage, I guess.

[00:21:40] And the rest of the context that we need to know about is that no rule changes would be made if anywhere to be made until after Paris, 2024, they do not change rules within two years. Within two years of a major world level competition, they will not change rules generally between, you know, in the two years leading up to a World Cup inside those two years or two years inside of an Olympics, because it's kind of a big deal and there's a lot of people who train very hard, and set up structures and do a lot of tape and do a lot of physical preparation and do all that stuff in order to play within the rules that are in place at a particular time. All right.

[00:22:35] So that's where we're at. I'm going to look at a few more of your comments. It's a little, yeah, there's a few, there's a few of the comments coming in.

[00:22:43] And then I'm going to look at what exactly this means. Um, Godders could dance his way out of anything because he's really, he's really good. Godders, I haven't touched my hair once yet. How do you like that? Uh, Cat you definitely think there are injuries. Feet, knees,

[00:23:04] broken hands, you'e not into statistics, and even though you're nervous about what's happening, you're interested to see what could happen. Okay. Sebastian, maybe current PC is not ideal. So not against change per se, but as a defender, you at least had an idea where the ball was going to come from or going to.

[00:23:25] Yeah. I, and I think that's valid for those of us. You know, Sebastian and I have been around for a little while, and there's a certain hockey sense experience. We have collected our own data as players, coaches, umpires, administrators, et cetera, et cetera. We know what hockey generally does in this sense. And there's an overlay there of everybody's expectations of things unfolding in a standard sort of way.

[00:23:55] And that is what I call hockey culture. And it's definitely, you know, that's one of the big pieces that overlays the penalty corner and mysteriously makes it pretty good. Sebastian with the new rule test, high hits from anyone. The D is not a safety improvement, negating safety gear in the long run, in your opinion.

[00:24:15] Okay. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Charne, players will play more skillfully with vision. Coaches have to be creative. We drive the kids to play a foot. The probability of scoring is high. We watched a whole game and only goals came from PCs. Well, that's an interesting question. Do we want a foul, an unintentional foul that's committed by a defender or an intentional foul that's committed outside the 23, outside the circle to cost more, to be a more risky thing.

[00:24:47] Do you have to be better because we, I feel that there's a good reason why penalty corners exist, why there's a set piece in which attackers have an advantage over just a free play situation where they are more likely to score because we don't want to, we want there to be a higher penalty for lack of skill inside close to the goal in order to help produce attacking hockey. I think that's a good policy reason. I like that. Do I like the actual penalty corner that results from it? No, but that's why we're looking at things, right? So good points there, Sean. Um, the irony is, says Mike McCartney before a significant defensive protective equipment, defenders were more cautious on the number one running lines, so seem to have less major collisions and injuries, but you don't have stats yup.

[00:25:44] This is the thing. Everybody likes to talk about the penalty corner equipment and how important it is for safety. And I don't know how many times we have to say this, that in other competi-, other sports, which are very big on protective equipment, like NHL ice hockey, ice hockey in general, in my area of the world. Uh, American football where protective equipment is

[00:26:15] prolifigate. It, it has been evolving and has been getting better and better over the years such that, actually, injury rates have increased. Riddle me this. How is that possible? It's because when players feel that they're more safe, they will take more risks. That is what all of the studies have concluded. And I'd be really happy if there's anybody who wants to try to take me up on that. Um, and, and. Say, no, no, no, that's actually not the case, but from everything I've read.

[00:26:55] I was very interested to see a few players at the, um, women's world cup of sports ball. Um, actually I'm going to call it football because I like the women's game.

[00:27:08] Does that make me capricious? Yes, it does. And I'm not mad that they're wearing concussion collars, which apparently help. So what is a player who's wearing a concussion collar going to do? Take more headers.

[00:27:27] Um, Sebastian says the KNHB is doing a trial in under tens. That has got to be like the least likely place where that needs to happen or is going to give you good data. I think that's hilarious. That's a bit of a middle finger to the whole trial, as far as I'm concerned. Um, I read the article that was posted in this, in the, uh, Discord,

[00:27:51] sebastian, and I didn't see that in the translation and I was, I, I had heard it somewhere, but I know you won't lie to me. So that makes sense. Um, yeah, it's not going to affect you. This is going to be one of the most esoteric episodes. So if you decide that you want to go for lunch, I'm totally not going to be mad, but this community, let me tell you is up in arms.

[00:28:17] So. Very serious.

[00:28:19] Hi, Carrot. Uh, nice, nice to meet you. Uh, you also don't like drag flicks. So you're open to see the change and it'll open up the play more. It'll give strikers that extra second or two to line up a great shot. Not so sure of safety. Okay. Well, we'll get into that. Oh, everybody. Ernst is here.

[00:28:39] Ernst says there's only two reasons for any rule change. The current situation is too dangerous. Second, the new rule provides added value and this proposed trial meets neither reason. Now Ernst, like, I don't know, you probably jumped in a little bit late. And the fact that we don't have the statistics, we don't even know how many players are playing worldwide.

[00:29:00] Like we have no idea. We really don't because local associations, national associations, continents, like, they don't keep good track. Everything is, and they keep track in any way they wish to count what is an active player. And nobody's keeping statistics in the games as to how many injuries occurring and how many penalty corners are taken and how many conversions are happening.

[00:29:23] We have no fricking data. So this is a moot point. We can't, we can't argue this except to say, does it seem reasonable that this is something that we can consider, as an option, and if it were to add value Ernst, would that change the way we feel about category one? And I believe it would. These two aren't just isolated factors.

[00:29:51] Um, but there you go. Check it out. Uh, Hey, Allie. Thank you. Thank you. These are my, apparently these are my disco glasses. Um, and how would umpiring position be affected? I don't think it would, to be totally honest, but there you go. Holy smokes, there's a lot of people and I haven't even gotten to the rule and it's half past.

[00:30:13] Okay. Uh, you see many scoreless games coming up. Okay, there we go. I will show you. I will show you why. Tugsy you'll have the first time shots. Of course, teams being coached to make the most being able to aim for the whole goal, but the extra second for runners to get out players to run back. No, it's not better.

[00:30:31] It sucks Tugsy. And I'll show you why.

[00:30:36] I know this is a discussion, but I'm going to be showing you exactly why you're wrong. In the nicest way. Uh, Alan, your concern is that umpires already struggled with safe shots at goal. You're now taking away the structure of the PC and potentially allowing more dangerous shots. Nope. Oh, hi Marco. Oh yeah, right.

[00:30:56] Carrot avatar. Gotcha. Gotcha. I know. It's nice to, nice to have you. Um, there you go, Sebastian. There you go. Talking about cyclists in the Netherlands, not wearing helmets and they have fewer injuries, although I've heard that there's a push to make cyclists in the Netherlands wearing, I'm going to have a very strong dose of maté here, uh, to wearing helmets.

[00:31:24] Oh, there you go. Perdi, it's good to see you, but this is going to be one of those slow episodes. I've been trying to speed them up just for you, just for you. And when you finally show up, this is going to be pokey as, as all heck. Um, you don't have any drag flickers there at the lower level. So if that's what they're considering, Stijn, that's a really good point.

[00:31:43] That if we're talking about lower level safety, that's not where the drag flicks are happening. So you're expecting more wild first shots at goal. Okay. Um, no, no. So Perdi, you, you missed the first part and that's okay. So I want you to take the little, the little toggle in the live thing. And I want you to go, and I want you to pull it back to the beginning where I talk about how this is happening, who it affects.

[00:32:09] And when, because I don't want to bore everybody else. And you mainly do low. Well, so do I, I mainly do level low level matches. Okay.

[00:32:22] Let me take you back in time. Not as far back as when these glasses were cute, but back to a time in 2017. When, let's see, okay, I don't even think that that part's important, so I'm just going to not talk about that because you all know what the rule trial is asking for, that the ball is going to exit the five meter dash, the ball is going to exit the five meter dash.

[00:32:53] And once it does so, it doesn't have to be a first shot, does not have to cross the goal line at any particular height. Okay. That's what we know. And that's, and as you can see, this is page two of the memo that didn't get out because whoever decided to leak it only did page one, although it's not really important, but you can see there's, there are fewer, there are fewer rules, but this is the important one.

[00:33:29] Um, I should change this color here because that's not going to show up very well. Okay. That, uh, these two it's K and M here. Is that showing up? Excellent. I'm going to make it really big, even though it's going to cut me off. That a goal can't be scored until the ball travels five meters outside the dash and shots are permitted to– shots.

[00:33:54] A goal are permitted to raise the ball. I didn't know shots could raise the ball.

[00:34:03] Like did anybody proofread this?

[00:34:13] Shots are permitted to be raised to any height, but they can't be dangerous. That's basically what it says.

[00:34:27] Back in 2017, the EHL decided to conduct an experiment, many experiments, goofy experiments, some could argue, where not only did they trial a different points awarding system for different kinds of goals as they were scored. So field goals were awarded two points, penalty corner goals, as we commonly understood as they are penalty corner goals, one point, but.

[00:35:03] A penalty corner, sorry, but if you conducted your penalty corner such that it was no longer a penalty corner and the ball left five meters outside the circle, it would then become a field goal. Oh, right. Okay. Sorry. I'm, I'm correcting myself in my head as I'm talking about something I'm going to say in a moment.

[00:35:26] Give me some, give me some grace. I'm tired. And if a penalty stroke was called as a result of field play, that goal would result in two points. But if a fee, if a penalty stroke was called as a result of penalty corner play, it would be one point. Okay. Good times.

[00:35:49] This was weird. This was weird. But what you had was essentially the same thing that we saw or that we would see in this rules trial.

[00:36:00] Feel you? They do. Here's an early attempt twice across the circle in round one of the E H L two rather than just the one from the penalty corner. Defensive unit, uncertain where the ball had gone. This was on day two, the competition, and they failed. This is regular penalty call. They'll get one back or they think, here's Mulheim and or Horst and Rotterdam.

[00:36:20] Five meters outside the circle at all. Are they or are they? They are. You know, so off just backing off Bluff and Double Bluff and Triple Bluff because wind fed okay, doesn't make any sense. It's cost you there. All Hertzberg needs to do is keep that on his forehand. This is the same thing, this replay.

[00:36:38] Step back inside, get a shot down the middle for Tiffin. Here's the final. Outside of the circle. Dw, pull it back. Leon up. Shoot. Oh my goodness. Me from DW to Leon up. Watch them. Let it go outside the dotted line. Drive in the underarm ball creates the space. Now Leonar absolutely nails it. He's middle that over.

[00:37:03] The biggest goalkeeper in the world over his shoulder. Clean connection. What a shot that is. Okay. Beautiful goal. Now I went through. The 20 17 20 18 E H L season, I only had a few of the games, so I couldn't comb through and find every time where a team tried the, the field goal version that would result in two points, and it wasn't, because of the way that they marked it.

[00:37:44] There was no way to see whether that happened in regular field play. So now I realize, as I'm going through these stats, I went through and I was like, here's a penalty corner goal. Here's a penalty corner goal. But what you saw was a couple of pretty good teams trying to do the five meters outside and not really having a great time in terms of conversion.

[00:38:14] And then one superlative team with two of the most skilled players in the world at the time, uh, managing to execute. And.

[00:38:28] And moving the toggle back sound, there you go. Um, let's see.

[00:38:35] And Michael, I like where you're going with this. Let me show you a possibility in a moment of where you're going. And that's your concern regarding this. The ball can be lifted with a shot.

[00:38:46] Hey, you know what? That is literally every other time a shot is taken in the circle. Why is everybody panicking about this being more dangerous than every other time you're actually perhaps creating more space in the circle and more space is always safer because you have more time to react. You have more lanes for which to hit where you're not going to be hitting other people. Why would this not be a good thing? Why is this suddenly less safe than every other free play attempt that's taken?

[00:39:26] That doesn't make logical sense to me. That's absolutely crazy.

[00:39:36] So let me just go through another couple of comments before I go through a couple of the alternatives. I believe as a few of you've alluded to that the goal conversion rate of this particular play is going to be low. It's going to be even lower than the abysmally low conversion rates that exist now because the circle is too crowded. Still.

[00:40:03] Okay. Uh, Luke, someone mentioned this on EH's post on Facebook. The goal scoring would cause so much confusion. Um, trying to score the goal accurately. No, I mean, they were just scored as a field goal, end of story.

[00:40:19] Um, the EHL was protest, protested widely that, uh, experiment and it was forget for quickly forgotten. This will be the same. I mean, Ernst, I think you're right in terms of what's going to happen with this trial, but I'm trying to work through it in a fulsome way.

[00:40:37] Um, okay. Like we don't have to be all like accusing people of closed minds and open minds and all that kind of stuff. It's going to be okay. And yes, and that's fine. We can take the empirical approach, but that's why I'm going back, Stephen, and I'm showing what I saw in the EHL and I watched that whole competition. I don't remember there being a lot of those two point field goals that occurred as a result of penalty corners taken that way and see, this is what happens when we talk that way at each other.

[00:41:13] Okay, don't want that here. We're not doing it. How many players allowed in the circle now? So with a penalty corner an unlimited number of attackers, other than the fact that you only have 10 field players that you're allowed to put there but as few or as many up to 10, and then you have five defenders, which includes one goalkeeper on a penalty corner.

[00:41:36] Okay. Anthony, in the first, in the first examples in the EHL, the first two was no goal scored was when the defense came out of the goal mouth and the goal and the final defense was narrow. Yep. That's, that's definitely a strategy there. Now to me, the timing of how long it takes the ball to get to the top of the circle and.

[00:42:00] The number of players who are still involved in the play means that this is a low conversion opportunity. I'm glad to see the back of the drag flick, but this, I don't believe is the way to do it. And there are two other ways in which the FIH has been examining alternatives that either one could have been a possibility.

[00:42:25] I can't believe I'm going to do this. You guys. Is everybody sitting down? Okay. I'll give you a sec. Just get comfortable. I don't want you falling over from a standing position and breaking a hip, Ernst, when you see that I'm going to be showing Hockey 5s on my show.

[00:42:43] This is a challenge. This is the alternative to a penalty stroke, but I wanted to show it in this context.

[00:42:55] So a penalty corner signal, but it means it's going to be a challenge, and it's essentially a shootout attempt that's taken in the middle of the match, instead of in the context of a shootout competition that happens after regular time of the match. Exists in order to order draw. Yeah, I know everybody's fainting.

[00:43:21] So I believe that this is taken at the 11 meter mark. So it's really, really short. As soon as the ball is played, all of the other players can start moving in from the centre line. Because if the shot was wide, for example, or a save was made, the ball would continue to be live, which is a Hockey 5s thing.

[00:43:47] Okay. So it's. A possibility, and a number of people have suggested that a shootout type option could be the high goal scoring conversion that they're looking for. It gives you the opportunity for the contest to be very game like in that it's a one on one between the goalkeeper and the attacker. However, I think that under most circumstances, it's probably too high of a conversion rate, given an unintentional foul situation.

[00:44:31] However, a trial could be conducted where you could see this being played and it being a live ball situation where goalkeepers cannot, as they can in the competition, they cannot send the ball intentionally off the end line and the rest of the players start at the centre. And everybody can run in and the game could proceed live after that.

[00:44:57] I would like to see that. An actual penalty shootout. Yes, it would actually be a penalty. And I wouldn't get mad at people calling it that. A penalty could be called a penalty one on one or something like that.

[00:45:14] Perdi do you think this is going to remove an opportunity for defense to be strategic in terms of setup and reading the play. And as a keeper, you feel it's less exciting to give less opportunity for impressive saves. So is this in the context of the penalty corner being taken away? I think maybe, and it practically goes back to the goal line bully. No, it doesn't because nobody wants a bully because that's dumb. That's static.

[00:45:39] That's two players standing still and smacking each other's sticks three times as it was back in the day. I can't even, like, I watched that, that made the rounds just a couple of weeks ago on the socials, one of those old penalty bullies. And I was like, wow, that is crap. Shootouts is done at youth selection trials at national level in Belgium, and it works well.

[00:46:02] I think at lower skill levels, you would see a much lower conversion rate, but a better conversion rate than penalty corners. It would probably be the right mix at lower levels. At upper levels. I don't think, I think it's, it would be a little more difficult, but if you're starting from the 23, as we see in the actual shootout competitions, maybe.

[00:46:26] And Cat, you do it in the summer leagues in South Africa. You know, that's the way it goes. Um, no, no, no. No, I remember back in the day when somebody asked me, somebody asked me, I was, um, as an FIH umpire, I was asked for my opinion on, you know, what kind of potential crazy indoor rule changes could we go to in order to improve indoor. And I said, I don't know, boards around the back. Holy smokes. I was young and foolish, but actually an indoor that's different. What I just hate is the fives number. I hate the fives number and the, all the things. I don't know. Yeah. The empire looked at absolutely dapper. You love shootouts, but a PC.

[00:47:19] No, I'm not, I'm not into this whole, it's got to stay because it's an integral part of the game. That is an irrational argument. It's emotional and it's sentimental, nostalgic, and we don't have time. We don't have time for sentiment and nostalgia. Our planet's blowing up in about 30 years. We have no time for that shit, Ernst.

[00:47:37] I'm sorry. We just don't, we can't pretend that we aren't going to make changes because we want to cling to the past. Not doing it. Yeah. You were triggering me. Damn it. I'm so, I'm such an easy fish, such an easy fish.

[00:47:53] But let me show you, that's one alternative and that's something that they have data on.

[00:47:57] They know what the conversion rates are. Maybe, no, they kept track, but they have a lot of televised footage of that. They can examine it. They can look at options. They can look at the actual shootout competitions and they can look at those conversion rates because you actually have the stats on that.

[00:48:13] You have a little checks and you have a little. We can actually see what it is. I, I mean, Ernst, would you say it's about 50%? I would say it's 50%. That's what I think. Like, I think that that's pretty reasonable, a reasonable guess out of anecdotal experience. Tell me I'm wrong. Only 30 years.

[00:48:37] Yeah, that's a whole other issue, whole other issue.

[00:48:46] But I don't think the PC adds value anyway.

[00:48:51] Um, here's another alternative. There was a Super Series a while back in Australia. I think it was Australia and this is what they did. On the penalty corner, four forwards versus three defenders, one of which was the goalkeeper. And the ball was injected from the same penalty corner mark.

[00:49:18] Okay. Oh, forget it. Hang on. Pause.

[00:49:24] I forgot the biggest part that I hate about this trial is that five meter marks are not mandatory under the rules. There are a lot of pitches around the world at the levels of which should be experimenting with this rule, cannot because they don't have five meter marks and they would be crucial for the proper conduct of this trial and they can't.

[00:49:44] So for that reason alone, that reason alone, it's dumb.

[00:49:50] Back to this. Here we are. So the ball was injected in the Hockey 9s experiment, was injected from 10 meters, same part, same thing about the defenders, and then every other player, including the attackers who were not permitted to be involved in this section, were at the center line.

[00:50:13] They were given 25 seconds to set up. Okay. And the injection had to cross the 23 meter line before a strike a goal. And the first strike a goal could be raised to any height if it were hit. This is what it looked like.

[00:50:35] I was going to do a whole video on this and then I didn't cause I got busy.

[00:50:46] Lots of space, lots of space and essentially two potential to.

[00:51:13] The five meter outside penalty corner attempts that we saw, it's a two touch situation after the injection. because of how much space there is normally, or successful variations also included a third touch. But because there's so much more space, this was the ratio that they were looking for. Now, I wasn't able to watch all these games.

[00:51:38] This was way back. This was like 2013 or something like that.

[00:51:46] So. I can't tell you the ratio, but I was able to find a lot more goals being scored this way by top teams than I could in the EHL, the five meter outside. Okay. Nobody's wearing protective equipment on these penalty corners. They don't have to,

[00:52:10] it's simple. All you have to do is look for the ball moving outside the 23 meter area. And that can be monitored by the supporting umpire better than the controlling umpire, to be honest, but because the distance is so far that the couple of centimeters that you might get an advantage of, I didn't see any of those where the ball was even close.

[00:52:43] Like, like they're fine with a few more centimeters because it doesn't change the, the, the value equation, the speed equation of everything so significantly that it's advantageous to try to get it right there the same way that it is when it's only a 15 meter distance. And then the umpires are monitoring the break at the center line as a support as they were before.

[00:53:04] And then, and then, danger.

[00:53:12] So you, you're, you're guessing that the, uh, shootout conversion rate is below 50%. That's fair too. I, you know, I'm just sort of estimating. The other part that's difficult is that we don't, like, we don't have a full number of them. Like if everybody's successful, then you only get, you only get three, you only get three successful attempts if the other team misses both there, like if the other team misses their first three, so that would manipulate the statistics a little bit. Am I on drugs? I don't know.

[00:53:47] Um, it, if the change saving injuries. Is that not losing value rather than adding value, cost of failure rather than prospective gain? Um, and the 4v3 looks like the training drills that you do.

[00:54:03] Yeah. Yeah. Nobody knows, nobody knows, but if the question is potentially saving somebody's life, saving someone from carrying the burden for the rest of their life, that they accidentally took someone else's life on the sporting pitch? I don't know.

[00:54:28] We will talk soon Ernst. Always appreciate it. Well, thank you. Jolt of Cola. Evil. There you go. Yeah, I know. Those were the days, weren't they? Okay.

[00:54:40] So I have to say, you know, I would say to the FIH, friends, did you see that? Did you think maybe, and you can employ that in an 11s context. All you have to do is just same numbers and then more people running and–.

[00:55:04] No protective equipment, reducing the amount of time, and I believe reducing injuries because you're increasing space in the circle. Hi.

[00:55:21] There you go. I know it's not the proposal, John, but what I'm saying is, is that if you want to make the PC rules safer, here's an alternative. Here's another way to do it. So they're going to do that trial. It's going to fail. And everybody's going to say, well, we're just going to stay with the same thing.

[00:55:40] Or if you want to do a trial, look at something that actually kind of, something that actually was semi successful at an international level that you had men's and women's and a lot more successful than what we saw in the EHL. But thank you for that criticism. Really appreciate it.

[00:56:01] Um, Marco, what is the available data? They have, they have anecdotal responses. So as I mentioned at the beginning, 4, 700 responses, half of whom said, we think it's unsafe. The other half said the right balance between spectacle and risk. And again, 50% split down the middle of who thought that the rule should change and who shouldn't. They're like, wow, that was conclusive.

[00:56:31] And you agree with me. There you go. That was close. Okay.

[00:56:36] So here's the bottom line. Yes, I know. As long as I don't swear in the first 30 seconds, right, David Hunt. If I don't swear in 30, first 30 seconds, I'm going to be okay. They occasionally split out, but, um,

[00:56:53] here's the bottom line. Guess what, England, you don't have to worry about it at all because you're not trialing it during the period of time that the FIH wants to gather the data, which is the over the next competition year.

[00:57:09] So you guys can shut up. Okay. You don't have to worry about this anymore. It is not going to happen. Next, Netherlands are trialing it for under 10 levels. You're not going to get meaningful data from that. We'll see who else in the world trials it, but it's not going to get imposed by the FIH on anybody.

[00:57:33] If anybody's imposing it, it's going to be a national association that looks at their domestic competition and says, yeah, we're willing to try this out for this level, for this level, because they believe that it is a worthwhile, as Ernst likes to say, value add for their level of competition.

[00:57:53] Okay. They will make some kind of decision as to the success of that trial after Paris 2024. And I am going to put, I'm going to bet this property that I'm living in right now that this rule trial, if anybody actually does it to any meaningful extent, will not give them compelling reason to impose this as a rule change in upcoming rule books, immediately after Paris.

[00:58:26] And remember, they'll only have a couple of years, like they'll have to make it pretty much right after Paris so that they don't impinge on the World Cup rule cycle. So they have very narrow windows in which they can make such a fundamental change to the rule book. It's not going to happen here. One hour, friends.

[00:58:48] See, there you go. You're welcome. Uh, the shootout conversion rate at the men's hockey World Cup, uh, you had all the data from updating this, this spreadsheet was 56%. Great. I'm going to, I'm going to text Ernst as soon as we're done and tell him that, cause that'll be good. Uh, quick correction. Under 10s in the Netherlands are with shootouts replacing the PC, not, Oh, okay, thank you, Daan.

[00:59:14] I appreciate that. Let's see who does it. Okay.

[00:59:21] I hope that helps. I wanted to make sure that whatever context I could provide to the discussion so that people could have more meaningful dialogue about it, that would happen. I don't believe that this trial is any more dangerous than any free play situation we have right now. It's just as dangerous, because that's probably how many players that we have in the circle.

[00:59:48] In fact, probably fewer players exist under this rule trial because it's a seven on five in most situations, eight on five at the most. So you're probably taking a few players away from what is often a free play of 10 defenders inside the 23 and in those spaces. It is, it is just free play. You guys, it's just free play.

[01:00:19] So if we want to make it safer, we need to subtract some of those players out. And John, that was the reason why I wanted to show the Hockey 9s alternative because it subtracts players out, creates more space and more safety for the players.

[01:00:37] That'll be really interesting. Marco, please, uh, let me know what you see. Okay. That's good. The PC is slow to set up too many rewards running down the barrel, potential danger. That's what we've got right now, I think is what you're saying. Okay.

[01:00:58] It's kind of a nothingburger. And for those of you who might have to try it because it's happening in your jurisdiction, please come back and share with us what you learn. Okay. Because what we don't have from why this trial is coming is any fricking data. So if you have access to data, share it with everybody because we need it.

[01:01:22] We very much need it.

[01:01:28] You like either of my suggestions. I like you either way too. Um, they're more game related, simple to play and understand, simple, simpler to play, to understand, and to umpire. Yes. Yes, easy.

[01:01:48] My work is done. Thank you. Yep. It is like any open play. And look, I'm not convinced that the way we're playing free play shots right now is inherently safe either, but it's safer than drag flicks. So from what I've seen, my anecdotes are people get hit with deflections. Ben Göntgen, hit with a deflection.

[01:02:18] Sam Ward, deflection, the poor young woman who lost her life in Australia deflection. Okay. Those were all deflections. Something happened very quickly. So quickly that even athletes at that level couldn't react. Freak accidents. That's the way it happens. How do you collect the data? The clubs in EH are meant to report all injuries requiring any more than first aid assistance, but you wouldn't put money on clubs having to.

[01:02:48] Guess what? You don't have to worry, but I'm sure that if a national association reports back to the FIH and says, yes, we have, as Marco said, a high level club competition in South Africa, where we're going to gather the comparative data sets that they will have instructions on how to do so. It would be a resource intensive effort, which is another reason why a lot of jurisdictions won't do it because they don't have the people to track it.

[01:03:14] They won't be able to give meaningful data. Unless they have people to, to do it all.

[01:03:21] Wait, what? Chris Pelmore. Yes. That was a save, but that's a form of deflection. So great there.

[01:03:30] No, Raju, don't worry. They're not, there isn't, can you imagine, can you imagine Harmanpreet the day before, two weeks before the, the, the Asian Champions Trophy starts and it's like, guess what?

[01:03:45] No drag flicks. Can you imagine the outrage? You have to consider the like economic impacts. If there is any professionalism in our game, if there's any money to be made, it's by drag flickers. And they, I'm sure, are furious at this. They've dedicated thousands of hours of their life training this one skill that is so valuable because it wins medals.

[01:04:12] It wins matches. Because of the way the rules are set up right now. Can you imagine? Bink. Nope. Can't drag flick anymore. Oh boy.

[01:04:30] Okay. And so Cat, you're saying a straight drag, drag flick. Yeah, that's, here we go. And, but yeah, we need more actual data.

[01:04:40] Does anybody want to talk about anything else yet? Yeah. Raju's laughing now. Cause he realizes. There you go. Just be outrageous. The men's Hockey World Cup shows you the drag flicking doesn't win you competitions.

[01:04:57] Well, let's discuss this more in the server because I'd like to see data. Those of us who have data, let's do the data and who knows, maybe Jon Wyatt is watching this right now. Hi, Jon. Nice to see you again. I actually kind of stuck up for you earlier because I was mad at the NA for leaking it the way that they did. But there you go.

[01:05:23] I know the sky isn't falling, but everybody can get mad about it. And that's what I really dislike about how this all went down was it just seemed like a way to, not intentionally by the FIH this time, but by whoever leaked it. I see you. Okay. Don't pull that shit again. Not cool. Yes, it does.

[01:05:53] John, it does end drag flicking. You can't, you can't drag flick that. You can't drag flick from 20 meters. It's just end of story. It's in the thread. Excellent. We have a thread in our discord server. Um, do I have a, a thing? I absolutely do not. If you haven't joined our discord server, this is where you can go and you can join our more thorough, laborious, uh, discussion about all of that.

[01:06:26] And Carrot, you would like to talk about the overhead that may or not have been illegal that led to the goal from Instagram. Oh my God, let's do it.

[01:06:36] That aerial, you mean that aerial. Here it is.

[01:06:43] No sound on this one because I don't want to take down notice.

[01:06:51] And I'm not even going to do a formal poll on this one because there's only one answer that I can see from the angles that we have. Oh, is this going to loop? I don't know if I've got this looping. I don't.

[01:07:08] Here, let's rock and roll this. Okay.

[01:07:15] So at this point we are watching from a side on angle. Okay. Traditional broadcast angle.

[01:07:30] We have a bounce.

[01:07:36] People can ask: is the aerial over after a bounce? And I say all the time, maybe. It depends on whether the ball, after that bounce, that first bounce, that second bounce, maybe even third bounce, results in the ball still being at a height, speed, trajectory that it is dangerous for the players to compete for it within a close range of each other.

[01:08:02] So for me, I think right here, you can see that it's close.

[01:08:12] And that play is allowed to continue. Please tell me your thoughts very quickly. Right answers only.

[01:08:29] The one argument you can make is this ball is somewhat into space.

[01:08:39] You could make that argument. You could succeed.

[01:08:48] However, with no initial receiver, regardless of whether, you know, um, whether it's no initial receiver, cause there's two players under the ball. There's no initial receiver because. They're not under the ball at the moment, but they both arrive at the same moment afterwards in order to contest the ball, but it's still dangerous.

[01:09:15] This is red ball every day for me.

[01:09:25] Sorry. Correct answers only. Absolutely. Nope. Come on, you guys. Come on. Where is the stick reaching out to? Look at the way in which the ball is played by the attacker. Just because the defender doesn't wade in there, doesn't mean that the attacker has done this safely whatsoever. He is flinching out of the way.

[01:09:57] He's expecting to get this call. And the stick is extending towards his head. Come on, you guys. Why am I having a rant about this?

[01:10:14] If this was an interception, this would be within playing distance and not safe. If it was an interception, so under either criterion, this is not the right thing. This is not the right result.

[01:10:32] Yes. Yes. Free hit defense, free hit defense.

[01:10:42] One of the biggest things that we can take out of this discussion though, okay. Definitely not safe for Sebastian is the angle that we have with this camera. Hmm. There we go.

[01:10:57] The angle that we have with this camera is the same angle that the umpire has, i.e. The wrong angle. So if you're the umpire in this situation and you're looking at this play, On replay, you're not part of this community. I am not here to throw shade. I am here to show you the results of what I would call suboptimal positioning and movement patterns that put you in a position where you could not possibly make an accurate decision about this call, because you're watching the ball take off from over there, and then you're probably doing what most people do is watching the round object in the air.

[01:11:36] Which we shouldn't ever do. But even if you're better than that, and you look to the landing area, you have shifted your attention and you don't know what's happened before that. And now your angle is not good. If you have mission critical positioning, which I advocate, all the time, and let me give, um, the link here for the mission critical positioning workshop is that you aren't going to be higher than the most forward attacker who would be attacking your circle.

[01:12:25] Okay. You just can't, not in the era of aerials. And the idea is that you're going to be interior of that play. You're going to be deeper than that. So you're watching the aerial come towards you. You will see all of this and you will see all of it correctly. This is not a mistake of understanding the rule.

[01:12:42] This is a mistake of positioning. And it's just because not enough people have learned it. And I'm trying to change that one person at a time, one umpire at a time.

[01:12:57] Yeah, it would have been a tough reception, Godders, um, like over the head, but, but that, that is the possibility. Right. Definitely a possibility. Okay. So when we look at things like this on the Instagrams, I also hate the fact that this is a vertical video. If I had been able to find a full aspect 16 by nine, uh, footage of this, I would have much preferred that because it gives you the big broader view, which is another reason why we have to be mission critical.

[01:13:28] We have to be deep and behind so that we have a broader view of everything that's happening, coming towards us. And we can take all the contextual cues into account. Watching things on Instagram verticals is so shit for decision making. I can't even, and I don't like going through these kinds of decisions.

[01:13:48] Other than I think this one's pretty clear. Pretty clear for me.

[01:13:53] You're welcome, Charne. And Hey, if you would like to learn more about mission critical positioning, please sign up and I will show you the magic. The magic of it. Okay. Any other questions? That's probably it. This is going to end up being an hour and a half show.

[01:14:12] And I thought it was going to be like,

[01:14:18] I'm a terrible person. Oh, wait, I have announcements and I forgot to make announcements, but that's fine. Ha, look, mission critical positioning right there. That's an announcement.

[01:14:32] Uh, for those of you who have been working through the course in the Discord server, I've heard positive reviews, and I'm glad to hear it because the simpler that we can make this as frictionless as possible for me to get knowledge into your craniums, the better. So please have a look there.

[01:14:53] And I wanted to send a shout out to the following fine individual. This person here, Rodney Allen from New Zealand. Wait, do I have confetti?

[01:15:10] Rodney has just joined Green. Thank you very much. Welcome to the FHU third team. And he's already digging into the Clip Library because he was like, wait, why can't I access the Clip Library? And it's like, Ooh, cause I didn't know you were there. Anyway, we fixed it.

[01:15:26] And yes, we're, it is voodoo stuff because just, just last week, let's see if I take that off.

[01:15:35] Um, just last week I spent some time here at this fine competition, the under 18 nationals. And I'm going to put up a slideshow so I can talk a little bit about it. And it's a six day, is that six days? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I guess it's five days, but six days, including the briefing.

[01:15:59] And that's what I was doing on my summer holiday, because when I take a break from hockey, I don't take a break from hockey. Okay. Wait, I have to start slideshow

[01:16:17] slideshow coming right up. So if you have any questions about national tournaments in Canada or umpire managing things right now, like feel free to spit them out. I actually don't have anything really, really planned that I was going to talk about, but I just wanted to share how meaningful it is for me as somebody who presents online, and this is, this mirrors my experience going to Amsterdam and being able to lead an amazing team of people through the EHCO under 19 club championship over there, being able to work with people in person is just so incredibly rewarding. And it is for me, it's exam time.

[01:17:03] Everything that I talk about when I'm on these live streams and everything I do when we're huddling, when I'm debriefing people on their matches remotely, when I'm responding to questions in Ask FHU, all of that is training for me and an opportunity to stretch my brain and my verbal acuity and all that kind of thing.

[01:17:26] I really liked that picture. Uh, so that when I go to a tournament and I'm able to work with people. I am executing on all of the skills that I've learned. And this again was an opportunity, this under 18s for me to get to hang out with and teach things like mission critical positioning to all these fine umpires, many of whom had never seen it before.

[01:17:53] And a lot of them had kind of been taught a few elements of it. There's Jamal, by the way, if you're keeping track, had, had sort of seen elements of it and especially the way that the international empires are sort of doing it, but not necessarily the whole package of the movement patterns and the details that I try to really incorporate in, that set you up for success.

[01:18:20] So we need, we need music in Goddard's dancing. I don't know why the, Oh, I don't like that picture. Um, yeah, I don't know why the music isn't coming through, but I'll try to fix it later.

[01:18:38] And for those of you who have been through it and you've tried it in your matches and you've gotten great results. Um, yeah, that happened with these folks too. It was really, really enjoyable. And I want to thank everybody that was involved. This entire third team group, they worked very, very hard. The conditions were incredibly hot.

[01:19:01] We had, it was either 37 degrees or it was flooding. That's Laurie Hogan, by the way, who's sitting there. Um, I just want you to know, cause she's my roommate whenever we go to tournaments. Um, 37 degrees Celsius, or we had flooding one morning and the pitch just was unplayable for about two hours. And those are tough conditions to, to umpire in, but some of the matches are available if you go to fieldhockey.ca. Which is the Field Hockey Canada website. There was an app. You can sign up for a free account. Give them a dummy email address. And it's called Veo Live. And some of the matches were available on stream. But a lot of them actually didn't quite function. But I still want to shout out Cass and Johnny. And Adrian, I believe, and a few other people who are working their butts off to try to make it possible for us to be able to view the footage afterwards.

[01:20:03] Didn't work out as expected, but a really valuable learning opportunity for everybody to see what is needed, what works, what doesn't work and all that kind of stuff. So look at all these happy people, happy people and who are in the shirts. I don't know what shirts you're talking about. Yeah. Don't ask me what was happening in that, in that photo either.

[01:20:28] There you go. Yeah, it was really great to have Jamal there. Jamal was my assistant UM at that tournament, and we were able to sort of pick up on the work that we did in Amsterdam at EHCO and work on it more. And he got to see more of the sort of bureaucracy administration behind things and making reports and all that kind of stuff.

[01:20:49] Thank you, Steven, for adding that link. That is exactly where you want to go. If you want to see what it looked like. They had a drone as well as a, that was the morning it flooded. And Mon is out there just pushing with a squeegee, just all on his own. Umpires doing it all. Right. But there you go. So that's kind of in brief, my report from under 18s.

[01:21:15] Oh, the Indian Maharaja shirt. It's like at the EHCO. Yeah. Yeah. They look pretty good. They look pretty good. I'm like, considering I'm thinking about that brand as a whole. Seems to sort of work, but there you go. Two umpires for the gold medal women's match who did a fantastic job. Uh, you told Luke Brathwaite about Jamal throwing the cards of the shoulder story when you're not, he refuses to tell it anymore because I tell it better than him.

[01:21:48] I think so. I just love that photo because Maan is on his phone and he's got a Maan iPhone case. Because he also plays for the under 21 Canadian team, but. Anyway, love it, love it, love it. Thanks everybody for taking that little trip down memory lane with me of the thing that just happened. I've almost finished, like all the reports are finished, except for my general term report that I have to send to field doc account and say, these are the things I liked about my summer vacation.

[01:22:20] And these are the things that, uh, room for improvement. Some RFIs, I have some RFIs. There you go. Thanks for joining me on the return to What Up Wednesday. Please make sure that you head over to our server to continue the conversation. We're going to have a little teas, post match teas. Where we get to talk about more opinions, what worked, what didn't work, uh, suggestions for improvement for me.

[01:22:51] I really do always appreciate your input and feedback. And if you see things out on social media that you think are worthy of an exploration or you're watching matches that are streaming online, there are still a ton of matches, uh, as Raj mentioned earlier, the Asian Champions Trophy is starting, which is always.

[01:23:11] Amazing value for watching. It's especially valuable for those of us who don't get to see Asian flavor hockey on a regular basis. Watch it, okay. You need to watch it because it expands your understanding of hockey in general. And it's just fantastic competition as well. There's tons of European stuff going on.

[01:23:32] So we're back stuck in. I have many preparations that are undergoing to get ready for the new season. For those of you who are in the European areas, for those of you who are in Australia, New Zealand, you're going to be wrapping up your, your outdoor. But for those of you who are going to be starting, we have new programming and slight different ways of doing things as we start. New courses to be released starting in September.

[01:24:00] So get ready for that. And let me see, you're back on the pitch. Rachel, have you ever stopped? You have never stopped. There you go.

[01:24:10] And Mike, yes, throwing his cards away before he even starts. I'm glad you had fun. It was really nice to have you here, Marco. And thank you, Jennie. Um, fake rule changes. We'd love to see leaked.

[01:24:26] It just makes me so mad. From now on, I'm going to shoot out competition. I almost said, I almost said the swear word, but I didn't. Thanks for everything. We'll see you next week. Take care.

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