ANCIENT ORIGINS

HOST NATION AIMS TO DOMINATE ANCIENT GAME IN MODERN ERA

Romans, Persians, Greeks, Arabs and Aztecs were enjoying jolly hockey sticks long before the fathers of the modern Games dreamt their dream. Indeed, Cleopatra and her descendants might once have peered out over a hockey match if sketches found in a tomb at Ben Hasan in Egypt that dates back 4,000 years are to be believed; they show a form of the game being played with sticks and rocks.

Historians also believe that the native Indian populations of North America played a long version of the game, in which the goals were miles apart and hundreds of players took part throughout a whole day. What the called their game we may never know, as hockey is thought to be derived from the French word hocquet, meaning shepherd's crook, the shape of a hockey stick.

The modern game, field hockey, was developed largely in English schools in the 1800s and was spread through the British Empire by the Army. Rules were standardised by the London Hockey Association after it was formed in 1886. It was not until 38 years later that the International Hockey Federation was born in Paris, while the federation for women's hockey followed in 1927.