Penalty Corner (field Hockey)

Penalty Corner (field Hockey)

The penalty corner is a special and important phase in the development of a field hockey match. Also called a "short corner" (in contrast with a long corner), "PC" or simply "penalty", it is awarded to the offending team when the defending team commits an offence in its shooting circle or an intentional offence in its defending quarter. The offending teams keenly seek after these penalty corners since they offer great scoring opportunities, similar to those offered by direct free kicks in association football.

Whilst the penalty corner has always been an important part of the game, that importance has become more pronounced following the introduction of artificial turf in the 1970s. The former great penalty corner strikers like Paul Litjens, Ties Kruize and Michael Peters were successful due to the countless hours they spent in practice perfecting their skills and craft. Uneven bounce and unpredictability were ironed out when artificial turf was introduced. Hence the proliferation of penalty corner specialists during the 1980s and 1990s including Floris Jan Bovelander, Jay Stacy, Carsten Fischer, Khalid Bashir, Craig Davies, Jim Irvine and Seong Seo Kim were no doubt largely due to the evenness and predictability of the new surface. While these players are basically hard hitters of the ball, the introduction of the drag flick provided another dimension to counter the goalkeepers who lie down during the hit. This new skill of drag flicking also introduced new exponents of this skill including Bram Lomans, Taco van den Honert and Taeke Taekema, Steller (Netherlands), Sohail Abbas (Pakistan), Sandeep Singh (India), Kuhan Shanmuganathan (Malaysia), Florian Kunz, Christopher Zeller (Germany), Calum Giles (England), Hayden Shaw (New Zealand) and Jorge Lombi (Argentina) who are the modern exponents of this lethal skill. They all have ability to whip the ball at speed up to 120 km/h (75 mph). This technique has remained the favoured way to score goals on penalty corners.