This year saw the introduction of 6 new rules to the 11 aside game of hockey. Safe to say, for players who have enjoyed this sport for many years, they represent a break with the norm and require some sort of getting used to! Having said that, the new rules are extremely beneficial to attackers, and to the flow of the game, but for defenders, the same cannot be said.
The first rule is in regard to breaking at a penalty corner. Now, if a defender or an attacker breaks early, or if the injector feints at playing the ball in anyway, they are immediately sent to the halfwayline. The difference here is, that a defender cannot be replaced, but an attacker can. Although this will make a difference to the number of early breaks, it is weighted in favour of the attackers.
The second rule relates to the awarding of a green card during the game. Before, the card used to simply mean a warning, but now it represents a 2 minute sinbin. Because the severity of the warning has increased, it does not mean that a green card offence is suddenly ‘one down’ from a yellow card: a yellow card offence is still a yellow card offence.
The third rule is very exciting! The third rule allows the ball to be played above shoulder height, provided that it is in a controlled manner and does not lead to danger. This benefits the game insofar as players will be able to develop a much broader skill set, and goals that would have been otherwise disallowed based on a technicality will now be less frequent. This does not grant players a ‘carte blanche’ in regards to flailing their stick around in the air however!
The fourth rule cancels ‘long’ corners. Before, where attackers would indefinitely lose ground due to them becoming stuck in the corner of the pitch, they now take a free hit from the opposition’s 23m line, adjacent to where the ball went off the back line. This benefits attackers in that they do not lose the ground they have gained in their attack, and thus allows a better flow to the game. When this decision is made by the umpire during a game, it will be tricky for the attacker to not go back to ‘factory default’ and sprint with the ball to the sideline!
The fifth rule also benefits attackers, in that free hits are allowed to be taken from within the 5m dotted line of the opposition’s D. Before, when the attacker had to take the ball back to the 5m line, this allowed the defence to reorganise and thus hindered the attacking play. However, now, the ball still has to travel 5m before entering the circle. This thus grants some breathing time to the defence! Furthermore, defenders not 5m away from the ball, but are inside of the circle, do not have to retreat 5m. They are permitted to shadow the play from inside the D, as long as they do not interfere with game play.
The final rule simply disallows the umpire’s to rule ‘up 10.’ In a nutshell, this benefits the defence. HURRAH.

Thus, overall, the 6 new rule changes have granted a much faster pace to the game, at the expensive of the defence!