This field hockey trivia quiz has 60 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 60 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
Ten field players plus a goalkeeper, with rolling substitutions permitted almost any time except during a penalty corner.
Q 02A field player may play the ball with which part of the stick?
Only the flat face and edges
Stopping or hitting the ball with the rounded back of the stick 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
The letters come from the French name, Fédération Internationale de Hockey; the body also runs the Hockey Rules Board.
Q 04The modern game was developed in the 19th century at public schools in which country?
England
The rules grew out of a winter game played by Middlesex cricket clubs, and the Hockey Association followed in 1876.
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
The host nation won that first tournament, playing as England, and Great Britain won again in 1920.
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
India's highest sporting honour, the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, is also named after the three-time Olympic champion.
Q 11After the 1928 Olympics, Dutch officials reportedly broke Dhyan Chand's stick to check for what?
A magnet
The story goes that an elderly woman then handed him her walking cane and he carried on scoring with it.
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 final, still a men's final record?
Five
India won that Helsinki final 6–1; Balbir Singh managed 246 goals from just 61 international caps in his career.
Q 21Which country's men's team is nicknamed the Kookaburras?
Australia
They are the only Australian team in any sport to medal 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
They had finished in the top four at every Olympics from 1980 onward without winning, and would lose the Tokyo final to Belgium.
Q 23What job did Hockeyroos coach Ric Charlesworth hold from 1983 to 1993?
Federal member of parliament
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 14Which country has won the men's Hockey World Cup a record four times?
Pakistan
The tournament was itself the idea of Air Marshal Nur Khan of that country, and the trophy was made by its army.
Q 15The first men's Hockey World Cup in 1971 was moved for political reasons and played in which city?
Barcelona
The original host was at war and refused to welcome India, so the FIH shifted the whole event to a polo club considered neutral ground.
Q 16India won its only men's Hockey World Cup title in which year?
1975
Balbir Singh Sr. was manager and chief coach of that winning side in Kuala Lumpur.
Q 17Which women's team had won a record nine Hockey World Cup titles by the end of 2022?
Netherlands
The ninth came at home in Amstelveen in 2022, a third consecutive title; only four countries had won the women's event by then.
Q 18'Las Leonas' (The Lionesses) is the nickname of which country's women's team?
Argentina
In 2000 they became the first women's team in any sport to win an Olympic medal for their country.
Q 19Luciana Aymar won the FIH Player of the Year award a record how many times?
Eight
A 12,000-seat stadium in her home city of Rosario is named after her; it was built for the 2010 World Cup, which she won on that pitch.
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'.
Q 24Dutch great Teun de Nooijer wore the number 14 shirt for club and country in homage to which sportsman?
Johan Cruijff
The number ended up on his signature stick too, the Dita Giga #14; he won Olympic gold in 1996 and 2000.
Q 25Which Australian won the FIH Player of the Year award for a fourth time in 2010, a men's record?
Jamie Dwyer
Dwyer, nicknamed 'Foetus', scored more than 244 goals for Australia and won World Cups in 2010 and 2014.
Q 26Sohail Abbas, who scored 348 international goals, was known as the king of which shot?
The drag flick
That total makes him the highest scorer of the artificial-turf era, almost all of it from penalty corners.
Q 27Field hockey pioneer Constance Applebee was athletic director for 24 years at which college?
Bryn Mawr
Her annual hockey camp in the Poconos ran for more than 70 years, 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
Goals can only be scored from inside it, which is why so much of the game is about getting the ball in there.