of 1.4 inches (3.
6 cm) over the line if a goal is to be
The physics of
a controversial
goal
J R PRESCOTT
Physics Department, University of Adelaide,
South Australia
Considerable interest has been aroused in hockey
circles (nopun intended) by a controversial goal
awarded to India in the final of the World Cup in
Kuala Lumpur(Rowley 1975). Exactly what happen-
ed to the ball isdifficult to establish and may be
known only to the umpirebutthere seems to be
general agreement that (a) the ball hit a goal post
and (b) it somehow returned to the field of play.
Umpire Vijayanathan is reported to have said 'I was
in the line of play and saw the ball hitting the inside
of the post' (Coldrey 1975). At any rate he awarded
a goal. A number of people have expressed the view
that it is impossible to score a goal under these
conditions.
This article reports a study to find out whether
there are any conditions consistent with the laws of
physics in which a hockey ball could strike a goal
post, score a goal and return to the field of play
without the intervention of a player. The analysis is
within the compass of elementary undergraduate
mechanics (and some sixth formers) and provides a
good example of the application of the physics of
collisions to a real-life macroscopic example.
Formulating the problem
For the benefit of those not familiar with hockey, it
is necessary to define the geometry of the situation.
The goal posts are rectangular, 2 inches (5.1 cm)
wide on the side facing the field of play, not more
than 3 inches (7.6 cm) deep and they are usually
made of wood. They are 4 yards (3.9 m) apart (in-
side measurements). The front face of the goal post
coincides with the outside edge of the goal line and
a ball must be wholly over the goal line between the
posts to score. A hockey ball has a legal diameter
within the limits 2.80-2-94 inches (7.11-7.47 cm)
(the rules actually specify the circumference). That
means that the centreof the ball has to be a minimum
Physics Education 1977
scored, and thecentre of the ball therefore has to hit
the inside of the goal post a minimum of 1e4 inches
(3.6cm) from the front face.
There is of course the obvious case where a ball
hits the post and bounces back from the net or the
goal boards (which line the net at ground level). TO
the physicist this is a 'trivial' case and of 'no interest'
-though it might not be trivial to the teams con-
cerned. Be that as it may, the question boils down to
the more 'interesting' case: is it possible for a ball to
hit only the goal post, score a goal and return to the
field of play ?
Figure 1, which is not to scale, shows the situation
atthe left-hand post (from an attacking player's
point of view). It is seen that the ball can only reach
this position if it was travelling somewhere within
the angle defined by the lines AB and BC where BC
just misses thefront of the other goal post. The
angle ABC is very close to 89". The diagram also
makes it clear that under these circumstances the
ball always has a component of momentum into the
net at the time it hits the post. If the ball is not
spinning, it willrebound into the goal. PatrickRowley
(private communication) has pointed out that the
ball in the World Cup match actually hit the right-
hand post,but this makes no differenceto the physics.
Analysis
C B Daish (1972) discusses a variety of collision
problems and this book has been quite helpful in
formulating the present discussion.
A ball of mass m and radius r is incident on a
surface at an angle 8 to the normal. Its speed is V
and its angular velocity is W about anaxis perpendi-
cular to the plane of incidence. It leaves the surface
at an angle 8' to thenormalat a speed V' with
angular velocity W'. Positive angular velocity indi-
cates backspin. These variables are shown in figure 2
which has the same orientationas figure 1. The
impulsive interaction between the ball and the sur-
face changes the components of linear momentum
both parallel to andperpendicular to thesurface and
also the angular momentum.The change in a particu-
lar component of momentum is equal to the cor-
responding component of impulse and the change
in angularmomentum is equal to the impulsive
Figure 1 Geometry of the problem (not to scale)
r "
lI
.".
c l
43

/ expressions are governed by the dimensionless
1
1
/ initial angular velocity W exceeds some value which
/ is proportional to the linear speed of the ball before
Figure 2 Definition of the symbols used in the text
torque. The components of impulse parallel to and
normal tothe surface are denoted by P and R.
Applying the impulse and momentum conditions:
+
m( V‘cosB’ VcosB) = R
m( V’sinB’- VsinB) = - P
2mr2(wf -w)/5 = -Pr.
The velocity components perpendicular to the sur-
face before and after thecollision are also related by :
V’cosB’ = eVcos8
where e is the coefficient of restitution. In addition
P and R are related by P G p R where p is the co-
efficient of sliding friction between the ball and the
surface. The equality sign holds if sliding is actually
taking place. Hence
P G ~= +
R pm( V’cosB’ VcosB) = pm(] +e) Vcos8.
These relations can be combined to fmd further
expressions relating the initial and final conditions;
to determine, for example, whether the ball will slide
or roll on the surface and the angle to the normal
with which it leaves the surface. The ball is almost
certain to slide at the start of impact and its subse-
quent behaviour depends on whether it is still sliding
at theend of impact or whether it has begun to roll.
If it rolls V’sin8’ + rw‘ = 0 and the condition for
rolling is :
rw 7p(l +e)cos8 -
v“ 2 (1)
If it rolls, it leaves the surfaceatan angle 8’ given by:
t a d ’ = -1 (
e
5 tan87
- 2rw wv).(2)
If it slides, it leaves the surface at anangle given by:
1
tan@ = - [tan8 - ,u(l +e)].
e
It will be noted that the last expression does not
44
contain the angular velocity w and that the first two
quantity ~ W / K
Expression (1) shows that, for a given angle of
incidence, the ball will slide on the surface if its
impact. Under these conditions, relation (3) governs
the subsequent behaviour of the ball. If w is less than
this value, equation (2) is appropriate.
The foregoing treatment makes no allowance for
deformation of the ball and goal post and assumes
that the latter is of effectively infinite mass. It also
assumes that thecoefficients of restitution and friction
are constants over the range of relevant conditions.
In context, all of these assumptions appear to be
reasonable and some supporting measurements are
reported below.
Interpretation
For the particular problem in question the surface
concerned is the inside face of the goal post. The
hockey ball will re-enter the field of play if 8’ is
negative and greater than 1” (figures 1 and 2). For
all practical purposes this condition simply amounts
to finding theconditionthat B’ is negative since
tan 1’ = 0.017 is very close to zero. If the ball slides,
this condition becomes tan0 p(1 +e). This defines
a maximum angle of incidence beyond which the
ball cannot return tothe field of play in any circum-
stances. It is independent of the magnitudes of the
speed of the ball and its angular velocity. If the ball
rolls it may or may not return to the field of play,
depending on the magnitude of rw/V. The condition
for it to return is derived from expression (2) and is :
rw 5
- >-sin$.
v’2
These conditions are illustrated in figure 3 for all
relevant angles of incidence. The ball rolls if rw/V
falls below the curve A. If it rolls, it returns to the
field of play if r o / V lies above curve B. The region
to the left of C and above A represents the conditions
under which the ball skids but comes back into play.
It will be noted that A, B and C are concurrent. The
shaded area contains all the conditions under which
the ball returns to the field of play.
In calculating these curves, the following measured
values were used:
Coefficient of restitution e = 0.55
Coefficient of friction ,u = 0.30.
These are measurements made with actual hockey
balls, three brand new and three well used; no signi-
ficant difference was found between new and old
balls. The coefficient of friction was measured for a
variety of dry surfaces including bare planed wood,
Physics Education January 1977
r Figure 3 shows that if the angle of incidence is
3 more than about 25" the ball cannot come back out
- *
- - l
I than 25" it is always possible to get the ball back out
I C
2
I post, then even a very slow backspin will be enough
e /degrees
L
3P 60
Figure 3 Values of the angle of incidence 6 and
the variable rw/ V (defined in thetext) which
govern the behaviour of a hockey ball striking a
goal post. For pairs of values in the shaded area,
a ball may score a goal and return to thefield
of play
painted planed wood, varnished planed wood,
painted metal and rough (unplaned) painted wood.
With the exception of the latter, the coefficient of
friction was the same for all surfaces for normal re-
actions up to over twenty times the weight of the
ball. For theunplaned wood, which had a very rough
surface even after painting, the coefficient of friction
was 0.4. It is not likely that the goal posts in a
World Cup hockey match would be as roughas
this. The coefficient of restitution was constant to
within about 10% for velocities of incidence up to
20 m ss1, an upper limit imposed by the height of the
Physics Department fire escape where the measure-
ments were made. These measurements suggest that
the foregoing assumptions of constant coefficients
of restitution and of friction and the neglect of defor-
mation of the materials do not seriously affect the
arguments.
Physics Education January 1977
regardless of whether it slides or rolls on the post.
It can also be seen that for angles of incidence less
provided it is given enough backspin, but that there
is minimum backspin needed for each value of the
incident speed and angle of incidence. If the ball is
travelling almost along the goal line before it hits the
to throw it back out again, regardless of whether it
was travelling slowly or quickly. If the shot is hit
from further out in the field of play, more spin is
needed for it to return into play after hitting the goal
post, as one might expect. The bigger the angle with
the goal line the more spin is needed until the limit
of 25" is reached.
Putting in numbers
It is worthwhile to put in a few numbers here: it is
not much use claiming that physics permits it if a
hockey player cannot doit. A well executed push or
flick travels at about 10 ms-l: a full blooded hit
would be about 40 m S-l. A ball travelling at 10 m S-'
at an angle of 25" to the goal line would need to be
spinning at about iifty revolutions per second. It
hardly seems possible to get this amount of spin on
a hockey ball with a stick during any sort of shot.
Slower ball speeds and smaller angles require less
spin, of course. For example, at 15" and 5 m S-l only
about ten revolutions per second are needed and this
seems possible although it would be unusual in
actual play.
These practicalities are based on trials by the
author with a hockey stick and a ball and a large
flat vertical surface, drawing also upon some three
decades of experience on the hockey field. Speeds are
easily estimated from ranges using standard pro-
jectile formulas. Expression (2) at normal incidence
was used to estimate r o / V . There was difficulty
achieving values of rw/V larger than about 0.5 with
either modified push shots or with an exaggerated
slice added to a normal hit. Control of the shot also
left something to be desired,
Summing up, it is encouraging to find that when
physics is applied to analyse the problem posed by
the controversial goal in the final of the World Cup,
it shows that what seems impossible is actually
possible (though certainly unusual) and that perhaps
the umpireconcerned was not 'seeing things' after all.
REFERENCES
Coldrey D 1975 Australian Hockey Circle 25 2 14
Daish C B 1972 The Physics of Ball Games (London:
English Universities Press)
Rowley D 1975 World Hockey 5 3 42
45