{"id":9959,"date":"2022-03-27T05:47:47","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T05:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=9959"},"modified":"2022-03-27T05:47:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-27T05:47:47","slug":"what-the-new-smart-sliotars-could-mean-for-bas-sizes-and-illegal-handpasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=9959","title":{"rendered":"What the new smart sliotars could mean for bas sizes and illegal handpasses"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a lowdown on what the new smart sliotar entails, go here.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

1. U20s will train with smart sliotars<\/p>\n

The new balls will be trialled in the upcoming All-Ireland U20 hurling championship, which takes place in April and May.<\/p>\n

Before the games, 24 unbranded balls will be supplied to each team in a sliotar bin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smart sliotar work group member Brendan Cummins said that counties will be given smart sliotars to train with before the provincial competitions begin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEach one of the county teams involved in the U20 championship this year will get a sample of balls to train with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s not the first time one of their free-takers or their goalie gets the ball or any of their players in the first round of the championship, this ball with a red dot on it and they\u2019re going putting it down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know from dealing with the \u00a0U20s, you don\u2019t want to throw out anything that spooks them for all the world so each manager will get a supply of balls to make sure there\u2019s fairness across it, to practise in training with those balls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that was very important to say as well so it\u2019s not just, \u2018Here\u2019s the ball, off you go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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2. Will the GAA target bas sizes next?<\/p>\n

A lack of standardisation of sliotars has long been a bugbear of hurling folk. The GAA first started to work in the area back in 2003, so it\u2019s been a lengthy process.<\/p>\n

Another issue that has been much-discussed in recent years as been the increasing size of the bas on hurleys, particularly those used by free-takers. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s get the sliotar done first and then we\u2019ll look at the next round if we\u2019re going to do anything,\u201d said president Larry McCarthy when asked if the GAA had plans to authenticate bas sizes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cummins added, \u201cIt\u2019s something maybe further down the line that I think the GAA will look at. Our brief certainly was just to make sure we\u2019d modernised the sliotar design and standardised the manufacture of it to know where it came from. We\u2019ve done that.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe that\u2019s an exercise the GAA can look at further down the road. I know certainly if I\u2019m a player or free-taker, if I can get a bas that\u2019s slightly bigger then I\u2019m going for it and that\u2019s what everybody is doing. For the time being that seems to be okay.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reading in between the lines, once the sliotars are addressed there\u2019s every possibility McCarthy will turn his attentions to standardising bas sizes.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Other uses for smart sliotars\u00a0<\/p>\n

As it stands the microchip in the smart sliotars is there\u00a0for traceability purposes. Cummins said the insertion of the tag made \u201cno difference whatsoever\u201d to how the ball behaved.<\/p>\n

Can the sliotar identify if it has crossed the goal-line?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a different technology altogether,\u201d said McCarthy. \u201cIt would be a heavier technology and at the moment there are no systems out there that would be able to do that accurately without changing how the ball behaves. This is merely around being able to identify that this is an official sliotar.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Illegal handpasses is another hot topic in the GAA at present, but Cummins said it won\u2019t be possible to develop technology in a sliotar to show if the ball has been properly played.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c(Not) unless you put a chip in every player\u2019s hand which brings the human rights issues completely out the window!\u201d said the Tipperary legend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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However, he feels \u201cplayers will adjust\u201d in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we had a free-taking competition in the first three rounds of the league and we all thought our game was bust, we all had our head in our hands and it ironed itself out and it\u2019ll be the exact same way with this \u2013 players will learn,\u201d said Cummins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they\u2019re training four or five nights a week, they\u2019re thinking about hurling every day of the week, it\u2019s their absolute life so they will work out that \u2018if I don\u2019t have clear space in my hand then it\u2019s a free and it costs my team\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they will adapt very, very quickly, the next couple of rounds of the league I would expect you\u2019ll see less and less of that and we won\u2019t be talking about it I hope by the time we get to championship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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For a lowdown on what the new smart sliotar entails, go here.\u00a0 1. U20s will train with smart sliotars The new balls will be trialled in the upcoming All-Ireland U20 hurling championship, which takes place in April and May. Before the games, 24 unbranded balls will be supplied to each team in a sliotar bin.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}