ABSTRACT
Many sports go through the process of changing their playing rules, usually to alter performance parameters so that the game is more attractive to spectators and television audiences. On occasion the rule changes are made to make the game safer. It is difficult to establish whether any of these rule changes are made on the basis of accurate quantitative analyses of the sport. Despite the numbers of publications concerned with match analysis of sports, it seems that none of the respective governing bodies has referred to these databases before making changes in the rules of its sport.
