Hurling Needs a heavier sliotar

Started by manfromdelmonte, May 21, 2019, 07:58:31 AM

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Fear Bun Na Sceilpe

Quote from: seafoid on December 10, 2019, 01:51:37 PM
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/yellow-sliotar-set-to-be-used-in-2020-hurling-championship-1.4110652

Yellow sliotar set to be used in 2020 hurling championship
Reports suggest new ball has passed tests and now just needs approval from Central Council

A yellow sliotar is set to be used in next year's hurling championship once it is approved at Central Council next month.

A report in the Irish Examiner says an exhaustive eight-year process has led to the expected introduction of the new ball which will incorporate a microchip in its core, allowing officials to scan the ball with a smartphone to ensure it is fit to use.

The ball has been tested in DCU and has also been trialled the last two stagings of the Super 11s as well as the Celtic Challenge in the US.

GAA seeing the light on the new yellow sliotar
With approval now expected at next month's Central Council meeting, the ball will likely come into use when the Leinster and Munster, Joe McDonagh, Christy Ring, Nicky Rackard and Lory Meagher Cup competitions begin in May.

The 'smart sliotar', produced by Kilkenny company Greenfields Digital Sports Technology, will come as a welcome initiative to many who have called for a different colour ball to make it more visible, similar to changes made a number of years ago in tennis.

Speaking on RTÉ earlier this year, Donal Óg Cusack called for a change.

"Tennis used to have a white ball and they changed for really good reasons, some of those being TV," he said.

"We see now the demographic in Ireland is changing. If someone is watching the game on television and they can't follow the sliotar it's a turn off straight away whereas, a luminous ball is much easier to see and it's scientifically proven that your eye will react faster to it."

Good idea

marty34

Quote from: seafoid on December 10, 2019, 01:51:37 PM
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/yellow-sliotar-set-to-be-used-in-2020-hurling-championship-1.4110652

Yellow sliotar set to be used in 2020 hurling championship
Reports suggest new ball has passed tests and now just needs approval from Central Council

A yellow sliotar is set to be used in next year's hurling championship once it is approved at Central Council next month.

A report in the Irish Examiner says an exhaustive eight-year process has led to the expected introduction of the new ball which will incorporate a microchip in its core, allowing officials to scan the ball with a smartphone to ensure it is fit to use.

The ball has been tested in DCU and has also been trialled the last two stagings of the Super 11s as well as the Celtic Challenge in the US.

GAA seeing the light on the new yellow sliotar
With approval now expected at next month's Central Council meeting, the ball will likely come into use when the Leinster and Munster, Joe McDonagh, Christy Ring, Nicky Rackard and Lory Meagher Cup competitions begin in May.

The 'smart sliotar', produced by Kilkenny company Greenfields Digital Sports Technology, will come as a welcome initiative to many who have called for a different colour ball to make it more visible, similar to changes made a number of years ago in tennis.

Speaking on RTÉ earlier this year, Donal Óg Cusack called for a change.

"Tennis used to have a white ball and they changed for really good reasons, some of those being TV," he said.

"We see now the demographic in Ireland is changing. If someone is watching the game on television and they can't follow the sliotar it's a turn off straight away whereas, a luminous ball is much easier to see and it's scientifically proven that your eye will react faster to it."

Totally agree with this - will take a bit of time for players to get used to it but will be a success.  About time in fairness!

Be great for a game under lights although hurling/camogie shouldn't be played under lights in my opinion.

I wonder will they change the football to yellow in the next few years? Anybody agree?

lenny

Quote from: marty34 on December 10, 2019, 04:32:09 PM
Quote from: seafoid on December 10, 2019, 01:51:37 PM
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/yellow-sliotar-set-to-be-used-in-2020-hurling-championship-1.4110652

Yellow sliotar set to be used in 2020 hurling championship
Reports suggest new ball has passed tests and now just needs approval from Central Council

A yellow sliotar is set to be used in next year's hurling championship once it is approved at Central Council next month.

A report in the Irish Examiner says an exhaustive eight-year process has led to the expected introduction of the new ball which will incorporate a microchip in its core, allowing officials to scan the ball with a smartphone to ensure it is fit to use.

The ball has been tested in DCU and has also been trialled the last two stagings of the Super 11s as well as the Celtic Challenge in the US.

GAA seeing the light on the new yellow sliotar
With approval now expected at next month's Central Council meeting, the ball will likely come into use when the Leinster and Munster, Joe McDonagh, Christy Ring, Nicky Rackard and Lory Meagher Cup competitions begin in May.

The 'smart sliotar', produced by Kilkenny company Greenfields Digital Sports Technology, will come as a welcome initiative to many who have called for a different colour ball to make it more visible, similar to changes made a number of years ago in tennis.

Speaking on RTÉ earlier this year, Donal Óg Cusack called for a change.

"Tennis used to have a white ball and they changed for really good reasons, some of those being TV," he said.

"We see now the demographic in Ireland is changing. If someone is watching the game on television and they can't follow the sliotar it's a turn off straight away whereas, a luminous ball is much easier to see and it's scientifically proven that your eye will react faster to it."

Totally agree with this - will take a bit of time for players to get used to it but will be a success.  About time in fairness!

Be great for a game under lights although hurling/camogie shouldn't be played under lights in my opinion.

I wonder will they change the football to yellow in the next few years? Anybody agree?

Ah ffs if anybody can't see a size 5 they need to go to the opticians.

Milltown Row2

Was watching the 95 semi final there, Clare v Galway.

This talk of a heavier ball as they score more now than them, nonsense, the style and skill level contributed to low scoring along with poorer stick work, while ground hurling and flicks were the rage then it wasn't fluent enough!

Though it didn't lack heart which is still aplenty when these teams meet up.
None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Ea

Bord na Mona man

Watching the older games more closely, it looks like the sliotar hasn't changed that much after all. Keepers like Ger Cunningham or Niall Patterson could virtually hit the ball the length of the field 30 years ago. Outfield players could drive it far at various times.
The biggest change has been the hurleys. The 'sweet spot' is bigger now. In previous years the hurley was shaped more to suit ground hurling, which lead to far more mis-hits and poor connections out of the hand. This is the biggest reason there was lots of 30 and 40 metre clearances. Under any pressure at all, a player generally hit the ball but didn't get great purchase on it.

Add to that, players are technically better and fitter nowadays. Far less one-sided players, in game fatigue not such a factor, players more likely to move the ball to a spare player instead of striking under pressure. Everyone numbered 5 to 15 is expected to pop it over the bar from half way if they get a look at the posts.

If you want to increase the ball-in-play time and reduce everyone shooting on sight, simply introduce negative scoring. A team gets docked a point for every 4 wides they hit.

imtommygunn

Watched Galway tipp from 87 or 88. There were some tough boys on that Galway team. Linnnane, finnerty, keady, mcinerney. You wouldn't have messed with any of them in a hurry in their prime. Hayes and Coleman not far behind either.

Kidder81

Quote from: imtommygunn on May 18, 2020, 06:43:01 PM
Watched Galway tipp from 87 or 88. There were some tough boys on that Galway team. Linnnane, finnerty, keady, mcinerney. You wouldn't have messed with any of them in a hurry in their prime. Hayes and Coleman not far behind either.

Finnerty was the best of them all in my opinion

Milltown Row2

Quote from: Kidder81 on May 19, 2020, 08:52:14 PM
Quote from: imtommygunn on May 18, 2020, 06:43:01 PM
Watched Galway tipp from 87 or 88. There were some tough boys on that Galway team. Linnnane, finnerty, keady, mcinerney. You wouldn't have messed with any of them in a hurry in their prime. Hayes and Coleman not far behind either.

Finnerty was the best of them all in my opinion

Agreed on Finnerty, but so many players on that team would favour a fan based on their styles

The 89 semi final they lost against Tipp was one that got away that would have been what that team deserved, Tipp blew them away early doors but Galway steadied the ship second half. Brendan Lynskey had an injury leading into the game and was dropped, came on and turned the game, should have started imo, fit for the bench fit to start and all that!
None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Ea

didlyi

Quote from: Bord na Mona man on May 11, 2020, 12:19:00 PM
Watching the older games more closely, it looks like the sliotar hasn't changed that much after all. Keepers like Ger Cunningham or Niall Patterson could virtually hit the ball the length of the field 30 years ago. Outfield players could drive it far at various times.
The biggest change has been the hurleys. The 'sweet spot' is bigger now. In previous years the hurley was shaped more to suit ground hurling, which lead to far more mis-hits and poor connections out of the hand. This is the biggest reason there was lots of 30 and 40 metre clearances. Under any pressure at all, a player generally hit the ball but didn't get great purchase on it.

Add to that, players are technically better and fitter nowadays. Far less one-sided players, in game fatigue not such a factor, players more likely to move the ball to a spare player instead of striking under pressure. Everyone numbered 5 to 15 is expected to pop it over the bar from half way if they get a look at the posts.

If you want to increase the ball-in-play time and reduce everyone shooting on sight, simply introduce negative scoring. A team gets docked a point for every 4 wides they hit.

Agree its more to do with technique and hurleys than sliothar weight. But for me its the man in space that will put the ball over the bar from the other end of the field not the man under pressure. And the hand pass has been perfected to the point that delivering to a man in space is a lot easier than 30 years ago. Reducing the number of handpasses would reduce that opportunity and give the opposition a better chance of defending the pass and the score. More stick passing would be more attractive too.

johnnycool

Quote from: didlyi on May 23, 2020, 02:01:08 PM
Quote from: Bord na Mona man on May 11, 2020, 12:19:00 PM
Watching the older games more closely, it looks like the sliotar hasn't changed that much after all. Keepers like Ger Cunningham or Niall Patterson could virtually hit the ball the length of the field 30 years ago. Outfield players could drive it far at various times.
The biggest change has been the hurleys. The 'sweet spot' is bigger now. In previous years the hurley was shaped more to suit ground hurling, which lead to far more mis-hits and poor connections out of the hand. This is the biggest reason there was lots of 30 and 40 metre clearances. Under any pressure at all, a player generally hit the ball but didn't get great purchase on it.

Add to that, players are technically better and fitter nowadays. Far less one-sided players, in game fatigue not such a factor, players more likely to move the ball to a spare player instead of striking under pressure. Everyone numbered 5 to 15 is expected to pop it over the bar from half way if they get a look at the posts.

If you want to increase the ball-in-play time and reduce everyone shooting on sight, simply introduce negative scoring. A team gets docked a point for every 4 wides they hit.

Agree its more to do with technique and hurleys than sliothar weight. But for me its the man in space that will put the ball over the bar from the other end of the field not the man under pressure. And the hand pass has been perfected to the point that delivering to a man in space is a lot easier than 30 years ago. Reducing the number of handpasses would reduce that opportunity and give the opposition a better chance of defending the pass and the score. More stick passing would be more attractive too.

The pitch in Croke Park is longer now than it was back then, almost 10 metres longer IIRC.

Back then the ball was made of a cork core wrapped in cotton thread which in a dry day was dead on but in the wet was a tonne weight.

Ash Smoker

It turns out that the problem is that the sliotar is too heavy and not too light.
The rubber they've been putting inside it in recent years is a big factor.
If they made the sliotar lighter, it would lose momentum in the air quicker.

Lar Naparka

Quote from: Ash Smoker on January 06, 2021, 06:22:35 PM
It turns out that the problem is that the sliotar is too heavy and not too light.
The rubber they've been puttingl
That is right. A light pebbe can't be thrown as far a another one twice its size. That is a matter of aerodynamics.
Nil Carborundum Illegitemi

johnnycool

Quote from: Ash Smoker on January 06, 2021, 06:22:35 PM
It turns out that the problem is that the sliotar is too heavy and not too light.
The rubber they've been putting inside it in recent years is a big factor.
If they made the sliotar lighter, it would lose momentum in the air quicker.

To an extent, but there is a point of critical mass at both ends of the scale where making it lighter might also cause the flight of the ball to waiver like a beach ball and that's no ideal either. Too heavy and yes the ball won't travel as far but might do a bit of damage if you got hit full welt with it. We'd a lad who got a damaged eye socket after getting hit with a sliotar from close range which bent the bar of his helmet. The helmet wasn't tampered with in any way either.

It is possible to keep the same weight and change the makeup of the core to make it less responsive.


Dag Dog

Good assessment here.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/sport/gaa/hurling/hurling-news/hurling-hit-crisis-sliotar-under-24385199

Has hurling hit a crisis? The sliotar under the microscope amid worrying trends
The distance that the ball is travelling is particularly topical at the moment as scoring tallies continue to soar

Make the sliotar heavier and it will restore much of the random excitement that has been drained from hurling, right?

If only it were that simple. The distance that the ball is travelling is particularly topical at the moment as scoring tallies continue to soar but there are so many moving parts to the sliotar that the GAA needs to tie down.

The quality of the ball varies, wildly in some cases, between different manufacturers, many of whom counterfeit the GAA logo on their product. It's a risk worth taking because regulation around the sliotar and its production is loose, to say the least, on the GAA's part.

Green Fields Digital Sports Technology, a company of many strands, one of which involves the production of sliotars, is in the process of developing technology that will, in time, provide instant data on the speed the ball has travelled, the force with which it has been struck, the distance it travels and the spin, some of which was successfully trialled at the 'Super 11s' in New York in 2019.

For now, however, the GAA is more interested in developing a microchip which will allow a ball to be verified by match officials using an app on their phone.

"So if you're using a sliotar in Donegal or Dingle," GFDST CEO Mossy Mullins explains, "it's giving the same results. One is not going further than the other."

Mossy Mullins, CEO of Green Fields Sports Technology, and Rory Williams, CFO, at the Super 11s in New York in 2019
It is hoped that the microchip system will be up and running by next year but, ultimately, what sort of ball does the GAA want referees to be holding to their phones pre-throw-in?

Essentially, there are three factors in the production of the ball which dictate how it behaves when struck: the weight, the size of the rim and the composition of the core.

There are numerous other factors outside of that. The increasing fitness levels and athleticism of players is significant and not something that the GAA realistically could or should seek to rein in.

Hurley sizes are something that must be clamped down on, however. The width of the bas should be no more than 13cm between its outermost points. But, similar to the sliotar, policing of this isn't so much slack as non-existent.

In the 25 years from the 1994 Championship to 2019, the average points per game jumped from 27 to 43. Last year it climbed to 45.

In the 2018 Championship, Galway set a new mark for point tallies (white flags) when hitting 0-33 against Offaly. Two weeks later, Waterford surpassed that when running up 1-35 against the same opposition. Cork bettered that when finishing with 1-40 against Westmeath in 2019.

But it's not just a matter of superpowers posting formidable tallies against lesser lights anymore. Limerick hit Clare for 0-36 in last year's Championship, for example.

Earlier this month, a round of Allianz Hurling League games coughed up the following scorelines: Limerick 0-33 Cork 2-19; Galway 4-28 Waterford 3-23; Dublin 2-23 Clare 0-34.

Current inter-county players and managers have united in recent weeks, to a man expressing the view that the game has never been better. Leave it alone.

That's a predictable and, to a degree, understandable viewpoint from those at the coalface who are essentially invested in one thing only: winning. They want to minimise the plot twists as much as they possibly can.

But the game belongs to us all and hurling is diminishing as a spectacle. Arresting that trend brings many challenges, but it must start with the sliotar.

WEIGHT
Currently, the regulation weight of the sliotar falls between 110g and 120g.

Even within that range, there is considerable potential for variance - up to 8% of a difference between the distance a 110g and 120g ball travels.

"To put that in layman's terms, to take an 80-metre free, it could be the difference of landing in the square or going over the bar," says Mullins.


Score tallies keep rising in hurling (Image: ©INPHO/Tommy Dickson)
While a range of tolerance is essential for engineering purposes, it could be argued that sliotar's 10g variance is too broad.

A cricket ball's weight, for example, can range between 155.9g and 163g, making the margin almost 3g less than that of the sliotar. Similarly, a baseball must weigh between 142g and 149g.

While that's something that the GAA needs to examine, there are greater gains to be made elsewhere in order to produce a more stable ball across the board.

RIMS
Officially, the rim height ranges between 2mm and 2.8mm, while the width must fall between 3.6mm and 5.4mm. Again, the variance is significant, particularly in the width of the rim.

"The way forward is an artificial leather so you get more consistency," says Mullins.

Even half a millimetre, all around the ball, impacts significantly on the drag as the sliotar travels through the air.

The introduction of a yellow ball last year miffed a number of players and managers but while it may have seemed a petty complaint, the haste with which it was introduced meant that the material used by some manufacturers was different to that which had been preferred up to then, impacting on the size of the rim.

Mullins, who played senior club hurling in Tipperary with Killenaule in the 80s and 90s, explains: "The rims have got smaller and smaller and it's got to a stage now that the players prefer the small rims from a playing point of view.

"Do you go back and put the big rim back on it? I don't think players would accept that. That's my own personal opinion."

CORE
The weight, rim size and even the colour may have varied, but the single biggest change to the sliotar has been with the core.

For decades, the core of the ball was made up of a cork that was tightly wound with yarn and dipped in latex to afford it some resistance to water.

But, at the turn of the millennium, polyurethane cores entered the field. A particularly temperamental model was dispensed with after being hastily introduced for the 2003 Championship but it was refined and the game has been played with sliotars containing a more stable version - or versions - of polyurethane cores ever since.

If the introduction of these cores has resulted in the most seismic shift in terms of how the ball behaves when struck, then it stands to reason that this is where most control can be exerted on how far the ball travels, more so than weight or rim size.


The coefficient of restitution (COR) is an international standard used for balls in virtually every sport which essentially determines how bouncy they are.

GFDST has liaised with the polymers department in Waterford IT and in turn with IKV, an institute which specialises in plastics processing in Aachen, Germany.

Their research has found that by changing the composition of the core, and not necessarily its weight, the COR and therefore the bounce of the ball when struck by the hurley is impacted significantly.

So, the distance the ball travels from, say, an 80-metre free, can potentially be reduced by up to 15 metres - the difference between a ball going over the bar or landing just outside the penalty area.

The die has already been cast for this summer's Championship, where high-scoring shootouts are to be expected once again.

But the game has lost its balance. Clearly, the scope is there to renew it to some degree at least by producing a more consistent sliotar across the board that doesn't travel as far, thereby restoring contests for the ball and, with them, a level of exhilaration that is being increasingly rinsed from hurling.

PadraicHenryPearse

 bollocks the sliotar is grand... the problem is the players...just get weaker players and the ball wont go as far. The simple solutions are always the best... change the sliotar...charlatans..