Sport Rules
How the game itself is played: the pitch, the goals, the ball, the teams, the passing requirement, tackling limits and the penalty scale.
Version 4.1, what it covers →General Rules, version 1.0
Horseball General Rules v1.0
The competition framework: which events count as international, who may enter them, and how disputes are settled.
The General Rules are the competition constitution: 22 pages, eight chapters and more than forty articles that decide which events count, who may enter them, what happens to the horses, and how a dispute is settled. Where the Sport Rules describe a match, this document describes a season.
Chapter II carries most of the weight. It grades events from national through international and official international up to championships and federation-named events, then covers how events are allocated, what medals and titles they carry, how the official calendar is assembled, and who owns the commercial rights. Chapter III moves to participation: invitations, entries, team selection, player nationality, and sets out the age categories the sport competes in: young riders, juniors, pony riders, children and veterans.
Two chapters are about welfare rather than sport. Chapter V covers horses: minimum age, passports, and the identification of the person responsible for each animal. Chapter VI covers abuse of horses, medication control and anti-doping for both riders and horses.
The last chapter is the legal system, and it is unusually detailed for a sport this size: a legal department, a protest procedure, reports, appeals, the deposits required to lodge one, a register of protests and penalties, and rules on when a decision takes effect. A sport whose national-team eligibility questions are as tangled as this one's needs the machinery.
What the general rules cover
- Definitions and the classes of event
- National, international, official international and championship events
- Allocation of events, medals, titles and the official calendar
- Ceremonies and commercial rights
- Invitations, entries, team selection and player nationality
- Age categories: young riders, juniors, pony riders, children, veterans
- Player registration and sponsored teams
- Horses: age, passports and the person responsible
- Abuse of horses, medication control and anti-doping
- Event officials and the appeal committee
- The legal system: protests, reports, appeals, deposits and decisions
The other two rulebooks
Organisation Rules
The specification a host venue must meet: closer to a facilities checklist than a rulebook.
Version 5.0, what it covers →Questions about the general rules
What makes an event "official international"?
The General Rules grade events in a ladder: national, international, official international, championship, and FIHB-named, with each step carrying different requirements for who may enter, who allocates it and what title is at stake. Chapter II sets out that ladder and the official calendar that holds it together.
Can a player represent more than one country?
Article 21 governs player nationality status, and Article 20 the selection of representative teams. Together they decide who is eligible for a national side, the questions that in practice generate most of the protests the document’s legal chapter then has to resolve.
Where can the current official text be found?
With the sport’s international governing federation, at fihb.net. The edition described here is version 1.0; anyone entering or running a competition should work from the federation’s current text.