Mostly Hurling:While surfing the net recently to see if there were any travel bargains available now that I will have some free time in 2007 I, as usual, sought the wisdom of the contributors to the Lonely Planet website .

Their bulletin board for travellers is called Thorn Tree and it's an invaluable source of up-to-date advice on all issues related to world travel. After trawling various pages I then ventured into the Ireland section to see if anybody needed a little help planning their trip to the Celtic Tiger-populated Emerald Isle. All the pages in this website are of the question and answer variety. My attention was caught by the following question "Could anybody tell me about an Irish field sport called hurling?"

Some questions illicit many answers. Others, very few. This one drew a few interesting replies.

Part of one reply was "hurling is a mad kind of aerial hockey invented to make the English feel embarrassed about tiggytouch soccer. From a distance it resembles a roaming pack fight between men with thin, pale legs and names like Liam and Seán. Hurling is rapid, breakneck and rambunctious. The aim is to hurtle a pellet-hard ball called a sliotar into goals using a stick with a paddle at its end called a hurley."

Some one else was prompted to ask more about the sliotar. Some of the answers were very basic while others discussed the diameter and weight of the ball.

I was tempted to write about the summer sliotar saga. I described it as much ado about nothing to the media at the time. I still think it was just a smokescreen to ruffle our feathers in Cork.

A few years ago the powers that be introduced an O'Neills sliotar that was to be the official ball to be used in all intercounty games. Of course, we in the hurling know knew this ball was too light and travelled too fast and was almost impossible to control. So the next year it was back to the original of the species. As there are many sliotar makers it was agreed that each ball would have to adhere to guidelines set down by the GAA.

At the time we were using the new O'Neills for all our games. However, for the All-Ireland final of 2005 we decided on a slight change of gameplan. We used O'Neills, Gaelic Gear and Cummins All Star sliotars at training for a few nights. Donal Óg Cusack, Ger Cunningham and myself met to discuss our puck out strategy for the final against Galway. It was very evident at training that Óige was getting at least 20 metres more on his puck out with the Cummins ball. So we decided so play what might be called a longer game.

Now for some reason that I can't understand there seemed to be a suggestion in 2006 that we were using sliotars that weren't meeting the regulation standard.

There was noise being made over the next few months about a more rigid application of the sliotar rules - whatever they were. I think it really came to a head again when we played Limerick in that tempestuous All-Ireland quarter-final game in Thurles in late July. We were awarded a penalty in the final minutes of a game that was very much in the balance. Diarmuid O Sullivan was our designated penalty taker.

As soon as Barry Kelly blew the whistle for the penalty Diarmuid ran to Donal Óg's sliotar bag and proceeded to put a ball down the back of his togs. As he made his way upfield he was the victim of some fairly heavy treatment.

One of our hurley carriers Niall also ran onto the field with a towel and of course a hidden sliotar as well. None of this was planned. Both Diarmuid and Niall figured it would be easier to score a goal with a new ball.

This incident was highlighted in the press over the following few days not for the fact of the roughhouse treatment dealt out to Diarmuid but for the "trick" we were trying to pull with the sliotars.

The core (excuse the pun) of this issue is that this "bringing in the sliotar hidden in the towel trick" has been pulled by many, many team mentors on this island of ours down through the years. But the gain really is minimal, especially at intercounty championship level where a new sliotar is introduced almost every time the ball goes out of play. The balls are of such good quality now and are in play for so little time the gain is minimal. That to me is the core of the sliotar issue.

A team trying to win three finals in a row has to expect that things won't always run smoothly for them

We, at all times played with regulation sliotars. There was never any plan by management to cause a scene in Thurles that Saturday evening.

Was it a coincidence that the noise coming from Croke Park at that time was being made by a Waterford man and us playing them in the semi-final?

Anyway I see in the press that in 2007 only sliotars approved by the GAA with the official stamp may be used in games and goalkeepers will not be permitted to use a private supply of sliotars from the goal area.

I just hope that they don't expect the already overtaxed referee to monitor this unnecessary piece of folderol.