The new FIH Ranking system announced on Thursday promises to be a breath of fresh air for international hockey.
No longer will nations have to wait for designated FIH or continental championships to collect ranking points. Now, the new system set to operate on New Year’s Day, 2020, will offer points for each international match sanctioned by the world body which made the announcement on its website.
The opportunities for most nations in the current system set up in 2003 presented just two or three events a year to boost rankings, mainly used to compose pools at the Olympics/ World Cup.
It left the lower-ranked nations feeling hard done and offered them little or no opportunity to grow.
Now, national associations will be induced to organize international matches to garner precious ranking points to enhance their chances of qualifying for the World Cup or Olympics.
The moot point for change stemmed from the fact that 60 percent of international matches currently have no ranking points attached. Then, when it came to determining ranking points for the five continental championships, there was an element of subjectivity to gauge relative strengths of the competitions.
The new match-based system, brings into play an exchange of points between the two teams competing in each match sanctioned by the FIH. Three factors will count — the match result, the relative ranking of the teams and the importance of the match.
The new formula promises to eliminate much subjectivity when it came to continental weights and the system appears to be fair to all. Excitingly, it could well herald a new era of raised activity at the international level with test matches holding perspective what with prospects of earning ranking points.
FIH Sport and Development Director Jon Wyatt said on the world body’s website: “As a sport, we are continually looking to innovate and provide opportunities for our member Nations. This new match-based ranking system will reflect current performance of all nations far more accurately than the previous system, and provide the chance for nations to demonstrate to their players, fans, media and funding bodies where they stand within the world of hockey and how they can move up the ranking.
“As with any new system launch and the introduction of change, it will take some time for everyone to adjust, and we will continually monitor the rankings to ensure it is accurate and fair to all. We’re excited about the new element that it will bring to every international match, with teams and fans being able to see the effects of the result immediately on the rankings of the teams involved.”
The FIH, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, said on its website that the fresh approach followed 12 months of painstaking research, analysis and testing. It involved using every official international match played since the end of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to arrive at a working model of the new system which allowed for constant monitoring, assessment and adjustment throughout 2019.
The test phase bore results that suggested the new system was more dynamic and sharply reflected of current form than of the existing one and drew approval of the FIH Executive Board, the communique added.
There will, however, be no change to the current rankings with each nation starting 2020 in the same position and with the same number of points that they finished with in 2019.
Salient features:
· Based on the Elo rating system, which is used as the basis of many other sports ranking systems
· When two nations play against each other, a number of ranking points are exchanged between them
· In every match, the number of points gained by one team is exactly matched by the number of points lost by the other
· Teams will win more points for beating teams ranked above them, and therefore teams will lose more points for losing to a team ranked below them
· Teams will win less points for beating teams ranked below them, and therefore teams will lose less points for losing to a team ranked above them
· If a draw occurs, the lower ranked team will gain a small number of points and the higher ranked team will lose the same number of points
· The number of points exchanged is dependent on the result of the match (win, lose, shootout win/loss or draw), the importance of the match (part of a major tournament, or a test series for example), and the relative difference in ranking points between the teams before the match