by Ripcord » Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:13 am
As a frequent and long time visitor to TheHurl.org, I noted, sadly, that there was a sharp drop-off in the number of visitors, both new and old, to what had been THE on-line source for sharing hurling news. Weather it be bragging about a recent built, offering new concepts for critique, requests for help or just sharing experiences, TheHurl.org was the place to go to and became my home-away-from-home.
Now, we have the HurlingForums.com. Thank you Matt. I'm a little concerned that the traffic will turn out to be minimal but, time will tell and, who knows. Perhaps it will become as popular, fun and informative as the old homestead was. I hope so.
There is little doubt the the hurling hobby still exists, but I do believe it peaked a few years ago and general interest by the public has slacked off. Like most other fads, once the public picked it up and ran with it for a bit, something else came along and the old fad fades away. But, there will always be those few who stick with it and wish to know more, as well as the next generation to be introduced to this somewhat odd hobby of ours. Just yesterday, I was speaking with a gent down in New Zealand, who has been interested in catapults for some time now and it looking to build something of fair size within the year. As you may imagine, I've offered whatever advice I can.
I chat on IRC and numerous people around the world have made known to me that they are very aware of hurling, although they may not call it that. Many of them said they found it very entertaining. Well, that's an involvement of sorts and from such a group one can expect a few to get involved with the building aspect of this hobby.
So no, Hurling is far from dead. It may have passed its peak but you know, I suspect that once a catapult (not a leaf-blower) hurls something 1 mile, we'll be back in the news again. Then we'll see another surge of interest. Meanwhile we still have a few new folks showing an interest and there is the next generation coming along.
Happy Hurling!
RIPCORD