Coffee Table Book of: Field Hockey (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Field Hockey is a large format book of field hockey, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: sticks old and new, the small hard ball, goals, nets and the goalkeeper’s kit, the blue turf with its white lines and its shooting circle, pitches empty at every hour and in every weather, and play seen from afar.

The kit is laid out plain: a stick lying flat on blue turf, its rounded back and its flat face, a white ball, a dimpled ball for wet turf, balls of white, yellow and orange, a ball sawn in half to show its cork core, shin guards, turf shoes, a face mask, the goalkeeper’s helmet, leg guards, kickers and hand protectors, a long bag for sticks and the green, yellow and red cards.

The past runs from a crooked hedgerow branch, a cork bung, a rubber cube and a goal of bent briar to sticks with long heads of steamed ash and short tight heads of mulberry, a leather ball with a stitched seam, kickers of woven cane and old boots with leather bars, with the trees behind them: ash, mulberry and the cork oak. The making follows new turf unrolled over its cushioning layer, sand brushed into its fibres and a plank of ash bent in its clamp.

Then the pitches, empty at every hour and in every season: first light with the sprinklers arcing, frost and snow, fog, rain and a summer storm, autumn leaves and spring blossom against the white lines, floodlights at dusk, a full moon, a pitch by a lake at sunset and another far below snowy peaks, an old grass field gone wild, and a game seen from far up a hillside.

Short notes run through the book, on the rules and the pitch, the stick, ball and kit and how they are made, and the history of the game: a goal counts only if an attacker plays the ball inside the circle, the goal is 3.66 metres wide and 2.14 metres high, in the oldest account, each goal was an arch of briar pushed into the ground, and synthetic turf came to top hockey in the 1970s, replacing grass.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.