Field Hockey Trivia
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This field hockey trivia quiz has 59 free questions with answers and covers the whole game, from the pitch markings and the flat side of the stick to the people and teams who made the sport's history. You'll get questions on how many players take the field, what the green, yellow and red cards look like, where the penalty stroke is taken from and why left-handed sticks don't exist, alongside the stories: Dhyan Chand and the Dutch officials who broke his stick looking for a magnet, Roop Singh's ten goals in one Olympic match, the first World Cup that had to move to Barcelona, Luciana Aymar's eight Player of the Year awards and the Kookaburras' long-awaited gold in Athens. It works for a team bus, a club social, a PE class or a pub quiz round, and the mix runs from easy questions any player will know to hard ones on the sport's medieval and Olympic history. Every answer has been checked against the FIH rules as documented on Wikipedia and the relevant player, team and tournament pages, and each explanation adds one detail worth remembering.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many players from each team are allowed on the pitch at one time, including the goalkeeper?
Eleven
Eleven: ten field players plus a goalkeeper, with rolling substitutions allowed at almost any time except during a penalty corner.
Q 02In field hockey, a field player may play the ball with which part of the stick?
Only the flat face and edges
Only the flat face and edges count; stopping or hitting the ball with the rounded back is a penalty, though accidental touches that don't affect play are let go.
Q 03The sport's world governing body is known by which acronym?
FIH
FIH stands for Fédération Internationale de Hockey, the body's French name; it writes the sport's rules through its Hockey Rules Board.
Q 04The modern game of field hockey was developed in the 19th century at public schools in which country?
England
Modern field hockey took shape in Victorian England, where Middlesex cricket clubs played it as a winter game to keep fit and the public schools spread it nationwide.
Q 05Where is the International Hockey Federation headquartered?
Lausanne, Switzerland
It moved there in 2005 from Brussels, joining the many Olympic sports federations clustered around the IOC's home city.
Q 06Hockey's omission from which Olympic Games prompted the founding of the FIH in 1924?
Paris
Paul Léautey founded the federation in Paris that January with seven member nations, and hockey was back on the Olympic programme by 1928.
Q 07Field hockey made its Olympic debut as a men's event at which Games?
London 1908
Hockey debuted at London 1908, where England, one of four British home-nation teams entered, won gold; it was dropped in 1912, returned in 1920 and Great Britain won again.
Q 08Which country won the first women's Olympic hockey tournament in 1980?
Zimbabwe
The Moscow boycott thinned the field and the Zimbabwean squad, assembled weeks before the Games, went unbeaten to take gold.
Q 09How many consecutive Olympic gold medals did India's men win between 1928 and 1956?
Six
India went 30 matches unbeaten at the Games in that span and did not concede a single goal in either 1928 or 1956.
Q 10Dhyan Chand's birthday, 29 August, is celebrated in India as what?
National Sports Day
National Sports Day honours him, as does India's highest sporting honour, the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award.
Q 11After the 1928 Olympics, Dutch officials reportedly broke Dhyan Chand's stick to check for what?
A magnet
Legend says Dutch officials broke Dhyan Chand's stick looking for a magnet hidden inside, so uncanny was his control; nothing was found, and the story grew with India's 1928 Amsterdam gold.
Q 12Who scored ten goals in a single Olympic match, in India's 24–1 win over the United States in 1932?
Roop Singh
Roop Singh was Dhyan Chand's younger brother; the pair scored 25 of India's 35 goals in Los Angeles and were dubbed the 'hockey twins'.
Q 13How many goals did Balbir Singh Sr. score in the 1952 Olympic men's final?
Five
Balbir Singh Sr. scored five goals in India's 6–1 win over the Netherlands in the 1952 Helsinki final; he finished his career with 246 goals from 61 internationals.
Q 21Which country's men's field hockey team is nicknamed the Kookaburras?
Australia
Australia's men are the Kookaburras, named for the laughing kingfisher; they medalled at six straight Olympics from 1992 to 2012.
Q 22The Kookaburras finally broke their Olympic 'curse' with a first gold medal at which Games?
Athens 2004
Australia's men finally won gold at Athens 2004, beating the Netherlands 2–1 in extra time in the final, after three silvers and three bronzes without a gold.
Q 23What job did Hockeyroos coach Ric Charlesworth hold from 1983 to 1993?
Federal member of parliament
Q 14Which country was the first to win the men's Hockey World Cup four times?
Pakistan
Pakistan won in 1971, 1978, 1982 and 1994; the World Cup trophy itself was designed and made in Pakistan, by the Pakistan Army.
Q 15The first men's Hockey World Cup in 1971 was moved for political reasons and played in which city?
Barcelona
Pakistan was due to host in Lahore, but political tensions with India in 1971 made it untenable, so the FIH moved the tournament to the Real Club de Polo in Barcelona, where Pakistan beat Spain in the final.
Q 16In which year did India win the men's Hockey World Cup in Kuala Lumpur?
1975
India beat Pakistan 2–1 in the 1975 final in Kuala Lumpur, with Ashok Kumar, Dhyan Chand's son, scoring the winner; Balbir Singh Sr. managed the side.
Q 17Which women's team had won a record nine Hockey World Cup titles by the end of 2022?
Netherlands
The Netherlands took a ninth title at home in Amstelveen in 2022, their third in a row; only three other countries had won the women's event by then.
Q 18'Las Leonas' (The Lionesses) is the nickname of which country's women's field hockey team?
Argentina
Argentina's women are Las Leonas, a name adopted after their silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics; they went on to win the World Cup in 2002 and 2010.
Q 19Luciana Aymar won the FIH Player of the Year award how many times?
Eight
Luciana Aymar was named FIH Player of the Year eight times between 2001 and 2013; Rosario's World Cup hockey stadium, where she won the 2010 title, is named after her.
Q 20Luciana Aymar's dribbling earned her comparisons to which footballer?
Diego Maradona
Hence her nicknames 'La Maga' (The Magician) and 'The Maradona of Field Hockey'.
He also played first-class cricket for Western Australia and qualified as a doctor, making him one of the most versatile figures in Australian sport.
Q 24Dutch great Teun de Nooijer wore the number 14 shirt for club and country in homage to which sportsman?
Johan Cruijff
De Nooijer chose 14 for Johan Cruijff, the Ajax and Netherlands legend who made the number famous; de Nooijer won Olympic gold in 1996 and 2000 and silver in 2004 and 2008.
Q 25Which Australian won the FIH Player of the Year award for a fourth time in 2010?
Jamie Dwyer
Jamie Dwyer won the award in 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2010, then a fifth in 2011; nicknamed 'Foetus', he scored over 240 goals for Australia and won the World Cup in 2010 and 2014.
Q 26Sohail Abbas, who scored 348 international goals, was known as the king of which shot?
The drag flick
Sohail Abbas was the master of the drag flick, the low-sweeping penalty-corner shot; his 348 goals for Pakistan, most of them from corners, made him the sport's top international scorer.
Q 27Field hockey pioneer Constance Applebee was athletic director for 24 years at which college?
Bryn Mawr
Constance Applebee, who introduced field hockey to the US in 1901, ran athletics at Bryn Mawr College from 1904 to 1928; her Poconos hockey camp ran for decades, and she lived to 107.
Q 28How long is a regulation hockey pitch?
91.4 m (100 yd)
The dimensions were originally set in whole imperial units, which is why the metric figures look so odd: 91.4 by 55 metres.
Q 29A hockey goal is 12 feet wide. How high is it?
7 ft
The posts and crossbar must be white, and a backboard 50 cm high runs across the full width behind the line.
Q 30The shooting circle is commonly nicknamed after which letter?
The D
'The D' is the only place a goal can be scored from, which is why so much of the game is about getting the ball in there.