Relationship between exclusions and final results in European Championships, World Championships and Olympic Games in men's handball 1982-2014

Abstract

Situations of numerical inferiority in handball have influence on the development of the game since they produce an imbalance between players on both teams. The objective of this study is to establish the relationship between the exclusions against a team and the final result of the match during the 32 finals of European Championships, World Championships and Olympic Games between 1982 and 2014. The analysis is structured in four Grand Olympiads (GO) for eight years: 1982-1988, 1989-1996, 1997-2004 and 2005-2014. It was carried out the notational analysis of videotape recordings with SportCode Pro v.8.5.2. software, leading to 185 situations of inferiority. The Kruskal-Wallis statistic test did not establish significant differences (p>0.05) between the number of exclusions per match and the victory of such match. On the other hand, the study establishes an increase of the number of exclusions from the half of the second time of the match during the last Grand Olympiad. This retrospective study can help trainers to give a tactical appropriate response to situations of inferiority as well as superiority for the benefit of the team.