 Field hockey is the oldest known ball-and-stick game and is believed
to date from the earliest civilizations, although there is no conclusive
evidence of exactly how and where the game began. The Arabs, Greeks, Persians,
and Romans each had their own versions of hockey and traces of a stick
game played by the Aztec Indians of South America have also been found.
Hockey can also be identified with other early games, such as hurling and
shinty and, during the Middle Ages, a French stick game called hoquet was
played, and the English word may have derived from this. The sport is referred
to as field 'Modern hockey' developed in the British Isles but it was not until the first half of the 19th century that field hockey became firmly established. The first club was Blackheath, headquartered in southeast London prior to 1861. The club played on a large piece of open ground with crudely designed sticks and a 'ball' that was a solid cube of black rubber. At this time there were few offensive or defensive tactics involved in the game and, although Blackheath was the first club it was Teddington, another London club, which modernized and refined the game by introducing several major variations into hockey, such as: including the ban of using hands or lifting sticks above the shoulder. They also began to use a sphere as the ball (instead of the rubber cube) and, most importantly, they instituted the striking circle which was incorporated into the rules of the newly founded Hockey Association in London in 1886. After modern field hockey had developed in the British Isles in the late 19th century, it spread throughout the British Empire, largely due to the British army and this is one reason why India, Pakistan and Australia are so formidable (all were British colonies). Today, field hockey is played all over the world by a variety of countries and field hockey is currently recognized as the second largest team sport in the world, just behind soccer.
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hockey
to distinguish it from the sport of ice hockey.
