Lads anyone read about or listen to Lar Corbett last night with Wooly and ROG what some keepers do to their sliotars?

Should a referee now check sliotars throughout matches? Each team should have to give him 5 match quality sliotars at the start and he can distribute them to umpires to ensure the correct type ball is used. It's downright cheating.
I don't know how you'd solve it at club.

Frederick (Louth) - Posts: 479 - 20/07/2017 15:30:51    2020041

tiobraid (Tipperary) - Posts: 4119 - 21/07/2017 09:33:42    2020386

There are standards for Sliotars e.g. weight 110g-130g, rib on sliotar has limits too, I don't believe it would be a good thing to have one/two or three suppliers of sliotars as this will increase the cost of sliotars. A recent Tipp star and a present KK star are selling 1000s of sliotars with their names on them and they are made in Pakistan. In Pakistan there are four factories manufacturing all but one/two of the sliotars used in hurling and they make the footballs too. I recently came accross sliotars that a guy up here is importing from Pakistan. He recieved samples from all four manufactures in Pakistan a year back and he has tested them all, and picked the best manufacture for each type of sliotar i.e. Smart and Quick Touch from one manufacture, real leather and artifical leather size 4 and 5s as well as First Touch from another. All the sliotars meet the standards set by the GAA and DCU. He sells them at cost price e.g. a dozen Smart touch costs him shipping/manufacturing/taxes £23.40 (real leather 4/5s cost him £29.47/dozen, Artificial leather £23.40/dozen) and he passes them on for that to the people buying them. He says he's more interested in seeing clubs survive than making money. Some of the biggest clubs in Derry and Antrim have been using them this year and I have officiated at matches where they have been used and I was impressed. On a real wet day the real leather do soak up water where as the artificial leather don't to the same extent. The most successful club in Derry in recent times told me their smart touch sliotars bought from him were as good now as they were when they bought them in February.

Brian_Coyote (Antrim) - Posts: 346 - 21/07/2017 12:41:46    2020516