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Jon Wyatt about qualifying pathways & a new global ranking

Jon Wyatt about qualifying pathways & a new global ranking

Released Saturday, 16th November 2019
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Jon Wyatt about qualifying pathways & a new global ranking

Jon Wyatt about qualifying pathways & a new global ranking

Jon Wyatt about qualifying pathways & a new global ranking

Jon Wyatt about qualifying pathways & a new global ranking

Saturday, 16th November 2019
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So it's the middle of November. In Lausanne, Switzerland where the FIH is based first snow has arrived. But that did not stop FIH from launching a couple of press releases in recent days. Announcing some novelties following the meeting of their executive board last week.

In today's podcast & column here we will only be addressing two of these. So the first ever world cup to be held in two different countries will not be on today's agenda. Nor the controversial choice for Bhubaneswar for the men's world cup, meaning 3 out the most recent 4 world cups would be hosted by India. The choice to start a world cup for Hockey5s by 2023, a possibly fatal choice for our 11v11 game of hockey, will also have to wait for another time. As will the launch of the FIH Intercontinental Cup, basically the 2nd division for the FIH Pro League. We will discuss these choices in separate podcasts & columns in the near future…

However today we will limit ourselves to less controversial though important changes: first we will discuss the new system for our global ranking to be launched in January of 2020. Secondly we will talk about the road to Bhubaneswar and future world cups. Wether these will all be hosted in India is for some other time.

Who better to talk us through the new global ranking and the new pathway to qualify for a world cup then Jon Wyatt, sports & development director for the FIH… We spoke with him before when the idea of a new global ranking was first announced in March (listen here), but now we're close to the launch.

Why we need a new global ranking

As Wyatt explains the current global ranking is based upon tournaments, where the new ranking will be match-based. Since most nations only got to participate in FIH tournaments when qualified, some only got to play for points once or twice every 4 years. Because only some 20% of all official matches played in the international scene were being played in ranking tournaments. So 80% of the games being played did not have any contribution to the world ranking.

That is a problem. Because most nations would have to show to their government or the sports funding bodies in their country some kind of progress to be considered for support. If you hardly ever get to play for world ranking points that becomes a difficult task. So this was one of the more important reasons to rethink the global ranking. But it's not the only reason.

In the previous ranking most everybody will agree there was too much subjectivity, especially in the relative importance given to different continental championships. This led to a flawed ranking. A match-based system will to a certain extent eliminate this subjectivity. Because it will now focus on the relative strength of the two teams playing a game instead of trying to figure out and compare the strength of entire continents.

Besides this, the new ranking will be more simple and dynamic... making it easier to create some extra buzz about individual international games of any level. Because the immediate impact of a win or loss will be easy for all to see.

How & when

The new ranking system will take effect from 2020-01-01 onwards. However FIH has chosen to make the change more gradually. So as not to throw everybody off balance from the get go... Even though the position of the FIH is high performance directors of the nations should not focus on this global ranking, but rather on performing well at key moments such as the Olympics and the World Cup. It is clear an immediate change of the ranking, recalculating the results of the last 4 years for example, would not be fair on those who made their choices in those days based upon the old system. That is why the points for each country in the global ranking on January 1st will be exactly the same as today. But for every game played from that day on the new calculation per match will take effect. Hence for the new system to take full effect it might take some time. It wil

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