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Field hockey stick


In field hockey, each player carries a stick and cannot take part in the game without it. The stick for an adult is usually in the range 89–95 cm (35–38 in) long. A maximum length of 105 cm (41") was stipulated from 2016. The maximum permitted weight is 737 grams.The majority of players use a stick in the range 19 oz to 22 oz (538 g - 623 g). Traditionally hockey sticks were made of hickory, ash or mulberry wood with the head of the sticks being hand carved and therefore required skilled craftsmen to produce. Sticks made of wood continue to be made but the higher grade sticks are now manufactured from composite materials which were first permitted after 1992. These sticks usually contain a combination of fibreglass, aramid fiber and carbon fibre in varying proportions according to the characteristics (flexibility; stiffness; resistance to impact and abrasion) required.

After centuries of different variations of hockey (including a version in England, sometime prior to 1860, in which, because of the very hilly heathland area in which it was played, a rubber cube and not a ball was used), the game became more organised and regularised.

By 1886, when an association of clubs was formed and the game became more standardised, the modern game as we know it began (and a white painted cricket ball had become the standard object to play with). The game had also by this time divided into various branches which developed as separate sports. Shinty, a game popular in Scotland, uses both sides of a round stick with a curved end, which is shaped in a similar way to a walking stick; the Irish game, hurling, uses both sides of a stick which is flat on both sides and shaped somewhat like bill-hook with an axe-like handle. Bandy also uses both sides of the stick. It was called "hockey on ice" in the beginning, as it was considered an ice variety of hockey. The stick in England, possibly because of the close association with it of cricket players, developed with a stick with just one flat playing side, the left face, below a round grip area—with the use of the right-face side, which is rounded, prohibited—an oddity that had a profound effect on the later development of the hockey stick and of the game itself.

There have been only three parts of a hockey stick ever named in the rules: the head, the handle, and the splice. Originally (until 2004) the handle was the part above the bottom end of the splice and the head was the part below the bottom end of the splice. Other terms in common use are "grip", which refers to the part of the stick held, particularly that area held with two hands when hitting the ball. Most sticks have a round grip which is covered in a non-slip, sweat absorbent, fabric tape. The handle remains rounded on the reverse, back or right hand-side but becomes gradually flat on the "face" side and also becomes wider, changing from a diameter of approximately 30 mm to a flat width of approximately 46 mm (the permitted maximum was 2 in—now 51 mm). This flat area above the curve of the head is generally referred to as the "shaft". The head of the stick is generally thought of as the curved part. The right side is called the face, the upturn the "toe" and the bend of the head where it joins the shaft the "heel". In recent times using the edges of the stick (as well as the face side) to strike at the ball has been permitted and thus "forehand edge stroke" and "reverse edge stroke" will be found in rule terminology. Forehand and reverse stroke refers to the taking of these strokes, from the right or left hand side of the body respectively, as the stick may be used "face up" or "face down" to make an edge stroke, the two edges of the stick are not separately named but simply referred to as edges.


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