Differences between international men’s and women’s teams in the strategic action of the penalty corner in field hockey

Abstract

The penalty corner is one of the strategic actions that determine the result in a match in field hockey. In that investigation we want to show if differences exist between international men’s and women’s teams in the development of this strategy when it is successful. We propose the following aims in our study: to see if a relationship exists between gender and the following variables: used skill, number of players who intervene, number of passes, zone of shot and direction of the sucessful shot at the goal in the penalty corner. The sample is formed by 59 games of international level of top level female (n=21) and male (n=38). In these games 128 penalty corners that finished in goals were registered. We used the data base notational “OBANGOFH” for the capture of information. The analysis of the data was carried out through crosstabs, and Chi-square (p<0,05), where the statistical SPSS package was used. The results obtained in this study determine that the action of the goal in the penalty corner, suggests significant differences between men and women, in the skill of use, the number of players who intervene, the number of passes and the zone of shot.