Drag flicks and lifted hits.

I can't drag flick, and neither can anyone on my current team. It's still quite an unheard of skill in the women's side of hockey at least, and it's rarely seen at the level I play at. However, it's inclusion to the game has made for some quite contradictory rules concerning short corners: why on earth are we still not allowed to lift our hits when drag flicks are perfectly allowed?

So, at first, probably dating back to the 'on-grass' days (I'm still not an expert), it was to do with safety. A lifted hit at a short corner could hit someone in the face and do quite a lot of damage, so it was much safer to have all shots at backboard height initially. But then, the game evolved. The drag flick was discovered in the early 90's in the Netherlands (well, of course), and as it was considered a 'push' in the hockey rules, it was allowed to go any height at a penalty corner. Hits were to remain below the backboard as they were still much more likely to occur.

Then the drag flick gained popularity, and the techniques got better, stronger, faster. Now in an international game you will rarely see a short corner routine without a drag flick, on either the women's or the men's side; it has become an exciting and expected part of the sport. Safety did have to be considered just as before however, especially as the ball can travel more than 100 kilometres per hour - actually much faster than a hit. So, they introduced the use of face masks to prevent the risk of serious facial injury. They were not mandatory at first, although now I believe they are, or they soon will be. God knows why anyone would want to face a drag flick without one anyway.

But still, any hit shots that come in from a short corner have to stay on the ground. I guess the argument is that it still makes it more safe, because most people cannot drag flick, so therefore in most games it keeps the ball at a reasonable height. However, in our team we have a set of face masks anyway just in case we come across a drag flicker, and because deflections can be pretty nasty too. With that said though, the ball can be lifted at goal at any point in open play and we cannot protect ourselves with face masks all the time; that would just be health and safety gone mad. There's always going to be risks when playing the game, that's all part of participating in a sport.

The point is, the ball has a multitude of different ways of going in the air, and the risks of this are not stopped by omitting the lifted hit from the penalty corner rules. It has just become a bit of a weird exception, like the “i before e” rule of the English language, which is broken by something like 40 different words; it doesn't actually make sense. If face masks are becoming much more regularly worn anyway, and more people are learning to drag flick, then there's not exactly much of a safety risk allowing people to lift their hits at corners – it's no longer justifiable!