Field Hockey Stick - The Hook

The Hook

In 1982 a Dutch inventor, Toon Coolen, patented a hockey stick with a 'hook' head. The hockey stick manufacturers Grays took the design up in 1983 and the first mass-produced hockey sticks, with laminated timber ‘head’ parts, were manufactured in Pakistan. This new design was possible because of the development of epoxy resin glues that did not require perfectly dry timber for bonding and curing to a strength that could cope with the immense stresses placed on a stickhead when a hockey ball is struck with it.

By 1993 the 'Hook' Patent, had been ruled (following a court case in Germany) to protect only hook shapes within 20° of the vaguely written "nearly 180°" (referring to the degree of upturn of the 'toe' in relation to the shaft of the stick in the Patent Description; the 'shaft' of the handle being described a being bent through "nearly 180°" to form the hook shape of the stickhead). That opened the way for the appearance of more 'J' shaped stickheads and the gradual 'morphing' of the 'midi' shape with the 'hook' shape. In that year also a Patent Application, lodged in Pakistan in 1987 by Martin Conlon, for a kinked shaft hockey stick, with a set-back Head (which was also hook shaped, but not to "near 180°"), was granted after strong opposition in Pakistan. (Indian and GB Patents had been granted in 1988, although the same company had also opposed the GB Patent Application). Mr Conlon designed and imported to the UK the first 'J' head sticks in 1990 but, prior to the 1993 decision, other distributors and manufacturers had been very reluctant to order made or produce hook style sticks of any sort, because of uncertainty about the strength of the Patent that 'ring-fenced' the 'Hook' hockey stick.