Six competition fields, 134 teams playing: both the U11 and U9 tournaments of HaBaWaBa International Festival 2019 started today. The big news is represented by the debut of the new HaBaWaBa rules, which are changes wanted by Waterpolo Development in order to make the game more dynamic, faster and with less contact. That’s an innovation according to the same principles of senior waterpolo reform approved by FINA last December. Principles which HaBaWaBa has pushed to the maximum limit, creating a cutting-edge regulation.
Young players fighting for the ball at HaBaWaBa International Festival 2019 (pics by DEEPBLUEMEDIA)
On the eve coaches were concerns about that, especially about the new regulation of fouls: the new HaBaWaBa rules abolished the difference between major and ordinary fouls. The new rule, in fact, states that “a defender holding, pulling back or pushing an attacker in possession or not in possession of the ball commits a foul of ‘illegal contact’ and he is punished with temporary exclusion”.
At its first application, the rule has worked mainly thanks to the kids, who have taken little time to adapt to it. Few matches had a high number of exclusions, but you have to consider that the game has much less whistling in total because there are not ordinary foul for contact situations anymore. The little players have proven to be able to defend even without putting hands on their opponents and, on attack, they have managed to make better use of their technical skills, relying more on their own creativity and inventing new ways to beat the defender. We are only at the first day of implementation and the new rules need long time to be checked, but the change seems to be promising.
