Pure Skill, pure enjoyment

Fancy yourself as a bit of a Henry Shefflin? Or Ronan O’Gara? Or even a budding Muttiah Muralitharan? Then Pure Skill, the Galway-based venue offering ten of the most popular ball sports in the world under one excitement-filled roof, could be right up your street.

There are some ideas that are just so good, and so seemingly obvious, that you wonder why you didn’t think of them first. Pure Skill is one of those. Not that it didn’t take a lot of hard work and plenty of investment to bring to fruition, but the idea is just so obvious that it’s amazing it hasn’t been seen before.

The idea is simple: ball sports occupy the interests of almost every human being, man, woman or child. There is hardly a summer family barbecue that doesn’t end with some form of back-garden game, one where all the family can join in. So why not cater for that interest by bringing ten of the world’s most popular ball sports under one roof?

Pure Skill, the brain-child of Galway man Adrian Reen, does precisely that. Covering 25,000 sq feet at its base in Galway West Retail Park in Knocknacarra on the western outskirts of the city, Pure Skill consists of two main arenas, the interactive sports room and the sports circuit.

The interactive sports room comprises a wide range of technology which enables you to test your skills in a range of sports including surfing, kickboxing, darts, ice and field hockey, soccer, basketball and golf. Out on the circuit, visitors can try their luck at a host of ball sports, from golf putting and chipping to Gaelic football, from hurling to rugby, basketball and cricket to tennis and baseball.

Reen, whose work in engineering, manufacturing and lecturing took him to London and Dubai in the past before he established Pure Skill alongside business partner Pat Flanagan, takes us back to the beginning.

“I was always keen on the concept,” he explains. “I thought there was a lot of value in having ten different sports indoors, and the craic that could be had with that. I had tried a lot of sports myself, playing soccer to a fairly decent level, also golf and tennis and Gaelic football and rugby. So the idea was always with me, although it didn’t really go anywhere until Pat came on board. The design-work, fine-tuning the building and the like, was two years under process, back and forth. Tobin Consulting Engineers here in Galway were very good to us in helping us with all the drawings.”

Success

The key to the success of Pure Skill is a combination of its uniqueness and its usability. There is no driving-range type need for a heavily-manned workforce for ball collection. Instead, highly automated conveyor systems – which Adrian likens to the system at play in your average pub pool table, only on a grander scale – makes the whole arena run smoothly. Indeed, the automated model is so original that Reen believes it has broken new ground for sports arenas worldwide.

“There had been automated batting cages for baseball but we believe this concept, for so many disciplines under one roof, is unique – it’s not being done anywhere else in the world,” he says. “The machinery is being made bespoke for us – the American company who develop it didn’t know what a sliotar was, we had to send one over so that they could automate collection systems for it.”

With 40,000 people taking the circuit during its first year, Pure Skill is well on the way to establishing itself as a destination of choice for groups, clubs, couples and families. Elite sportsmen have also been through its doors, including the Connacht rugby squad, Waterford’s senior hurling panel and the youth teams of Premier League soccer club Fulham.

So what can you expect when you pitch up at Pure Skill for the first time?

“We’ll be there to greet you and take you through what’s ahead,” says Adrian. “The whole thing is operated by a swipe card mechanism so we’ll explain that in detail. Everyone gets a scorecard, which is marked out of 100 points. There are 20 different cages, covering 10 different disciplines. The whole circuit takes about one hour and 20 minutes to complete. One of our credos is value for money. For adults during the week it’s €12, under-14s are a tenner. At the weekend it’s €15 for adults and €12 for children. There’s no hidden cost – that’s all you pay, and we think it represents good value for money for the outlay that we’ve put in and the value that you get.

“As for the individual sports, they’re all tailored to simulate the real thing. In the hurling cage, 10 sliotars are released into a trough and you have three different goal targets to hit; four have to go into the bottom corner, two in the middle and four at the top, so you hit the ball to that target and your partner is outside marking your scorecard.

For baseball, you have an actual image of a pitcher offloading a ball, which comes at you at 55mph.

“Soccer is similar. You have four rectangular targets – two in each bottom corner, three in the top corners. In tennis, the ball is fired out at you from a machine and you have to return it to bullseye targets over a net. With golf chipping, you have to get the ball into a one-metre circular hole at a 45-degree incline 14 metres away. The golf putting takes place on a professional golf surface, which has been laid by Southwest Greens, complete with fringe and the whole lot.

“In both rugby and Gaelic football, you have 20-metre penalty and free conversion attempts. In cricket, you’ve an overarm throw to spring-activated stumps at the base of the crease and for baseball, you have an actual image of a pitcher offloading a ball, which comes at you at 55mph.”

Given the number of balls flying around the cages, presumably Pure Skill must have plenty of work to do to meet stringent health and safety requirements? On the contrary, says Adrian. The whole thing is designed and implemented to such high standards that there are virtually no health and safety issues.

Non-contact

“The beauty of it is that it’s non-contact. In baseball, if you’re careless the ball might hit your hand but we have painted feet where you’re supposed to stand and everyone is briefed on that before they start. You can’t really do any damage, and the fact that our insurance premium, which wasn’t that much to begin with, has gone down by 20 per cent for the second year is testament to the fact that safety isn’t a big issue.”

So where can this concept go? Surely Pure Skill outlets will be seen elsewhere before too long?

“There is interest from other locations around the country, and indeed in the UK also, to introduce this concept elsewhere,” admits Adrian. “We can see the business going in that direction in the future. We’ve set up Galway as a prototype but there’s always the potential to go elsewhere with it if the public like it, and that has certainly proven to be the case.

“We’ve had stag parties coming to us from the UK, we’ve had corporate parties, sports teams including the Waterford hurlers, Connacht rugby and Fulham’s elite under-15 squad, so it does have a wide appeal to a very diverse group of people. Come in here any weekend and you’ll see all ages, genders and nationalities.

“There’s all sorts of joshing and craic, lads saying ‘How could you be so bad at the cricket?’ and the like. People forget themselves when they come here. They pay their money, they have an hour and a half here, and they get great enjoyment from it. We see that from every group that comes in.”

Shane Breslin