RORY McILROY said a lot of interesting things in his big interview with Paul Kimmage in the Sunday Independent towards the end of last year. One in particular caught my attention, as a hurling man with a competing and time-depleting passion for golf.
McIlroys’s game transformed after switching from TaylorMade’s TP5 ball to the 2019 TP5x last April after the Masters. His record before and since is easily accessible but one stat he gave hit home. “Before Augusta I was ranked 207th on the PGA Tour from inside 125 yards; and since Augusta I’ve been ranked number one,” he said.
The lay person might reasonably think that the differences between expensive golf ball A and expensive golf ball B would be subtle, yet subtleties in equipment can make a marked impact across sports.
The changes to sliotars over the past few seasons, first with the yellow ball, and now the introduction of the chipped ‘smart sliotar’, were made with the best of intentions. It’s entirely rational that the ball in play should be uniform.
The days of me having a bag of Cummins All-Stars in one goal and say Eoin Murphy in the Kilkenny goal having O’Neills, and there being significant differences to the rims, weight and how the sliotars play, should be finished.
Yet in the push towards progress I think we’re in a worse place than we were five years ago. That’s not to say we shouldn’t continue to keep going towards a better situation, but to do that we need to appraise where we are.
The yellow sliotar simply does not play as well as the white one. There is a more slippy quality to the leather, especially in wet conditions. There’s a dead feel to the ball when struck compared to the white sliotars, and they don’t fly as true.
As others have said, this is not necessarily a result of the colour of the ball, more the materials used to make them and their impact on performance.
From talking to players in different counties, the new smart sliotar has had some issues since it was introduced for the start of the league, after being used in the U20 championship last year. The ball seems to lack a bit of pop.
Watching Limerick-Galway last weekend I was surprised by the amount of balls that were dropping short of their target, or were misplaced slightly. Now, that could be down to all of the usual caveats about the time of year, but given the quality of players on the field you would expect sharper striking.
If a free is missed or a puck out is off-point then the player will immediately carry the responsibility. That is one of the reasons, I believe, why there has not been a more vocal reaction from players. They know that if they raise their head to talk about sliotars not flying as they should then it can appear as if they are trying to make excuses for past or even future events.
And players, I would argue, should not have to speak out publicly. Instead they should be closer to the conversation about changes to equipment. John Fogarty reported recently in The Irish Examiner that two field tests were overseen by the committee in charge of the smart sliotar. This is welcome.
Yet the consultation should be more wide ranging. You can’t have a conversation with every player on every panel, but channels should certainly be open between county sides and those in charge of the smart sliotar.
I’ve spoken to lots of fellas about this, from different teams and places, and nobody told me that they’ve had a chance to give constructive feedback.
It will take a lot of discussion and, I dare say, practical modification to get to where we want to be.
Sliotars and the way teams use them have evolved a lot over the years. We in Cork have often stood accused of changing sliotars in various ways.
When I kept goal, my only criteria was that the ball had to be worn-in slightly before it was put in the bag for a match. Otherwise you’d have rims protruding on a heavy ball that could break a hurley, especially on a cold day.
A ball, like a player, would have to earn the call up for a match. If it feels good in training I’d put it into my stash.
Dónal Óg Cusack was part of the Clare management team in 2017 when we played them in the Munster final. He paid me the complement of trying to get in my head by having someone disappear my sliotars into the Killinan End before the game. But my friend in the Cork set-up, Pat Keane, had back-up sliotars for me.
The mind games didn’t end there. Clare usually had the All-Star Sliotar at the time, like we always did, but switched to a different brand for the day. I can remember getting the ball in my hand at one stage, thinking ‘what the hell is this?’ All part of the jostling and buzz of a final, but also a sign of how important the sliotar is to the mentality of the opposition goalkeeper, and the entire team for that matter.
The fact that only two companies have been approved so far to produce smart sliotars, O’Neills and Greenfields, means that for now at least we haven’t perhaps got the level of competition necessary for excellent results.
The All-Star ball is the one we had. It’s not just a Cork preference for a local company. I know at different stages they have been used by Limerick, Clare, Dublin and Galway and most probably others too. I like their sliotars because they have the smallest rims and they are a sweet ball to strike. The feeling you get in any stick and ball sport, where you make a true, satisfying connection, happens most with the All Star sliotar in my experience. And then once it leaves the hurley it behaves in the air the way you want and expect it too. If it doesn’t, well, then you can look squarely at yourself.
That’s the stage we need to be at with the smart, yellow sliotar. One advantage is if the new sliotar is slightly unsatisfactory then at least it’s the same for everybody. But it’s still in everybody’s interests that it’s 100% soon. Do we want to see a championship of Rory McIlroys of 2021, or the version post the Masters of 2022?
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