An analysis of offensive patterns of play of Kenyan male handball teams in national tournaments

Abstract

The objective of every handball team in competition is to advance the ball as fast as possible to the opponents' goalmouth and attempt to make a score without opposition. The wish of every handball coach is therefore, to train a team in offensive patterns of play that could be used to advance the ball to the opponent’s goalmouth and make a score. This study analysed and established such offensive patterns of play by Kenyan Male Handball teams during the 1998 National Tournaments.

Twenty matches sampled from five tournaments in Kenya were used. At the end of the matches, there were groups of winners and losers. The performances of these groups were analysed under counter attack and positional play patterns of attack. The performances of these groups were analysed under counter attack and positional play patterns of attack. The data was collected by observing pre-recorded videotapes. The collected data was descriptively analysed using tables and charts to obtain the frequencies, percentages, means, variances and standard deviations of the outcomes.

Inferentially, the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the offensive performance between and within the two groups. The results showed significant differences between the successful and unsuccessful rates of counter attack and positional play patterns in winners, losers, between winners and losers and in overall performance in offensive patterns of play. The level of significance was p0.05.

The findings revealed that teams used both counter and positional play patterns. However, the use of positional play (82.17%) was more than counter attack (17.83%). Though more goals were scored from positional play (529) compared to counter attack goals (212), the study revealed that the counter attack success rate was higher (37%) compared to positional play (20%).

It is therefore recommended that Kenyan Handball Coaches should exploit the counter attack patterns and vary their positional play patterns so as to improve in their scoring ability. Further studies in the same area with female teams, normal duration and larger samples are also necessary. The scientific approach to training and competition should also not be overlooked by coaches and trainers, in order to fully exploit and improve individual and team performance.