Product Review: Mercian Ultimate Field Hockey Goalie Gloves

Mercian Ultimate Field Hockey Goalie Gloves Review:
We recently managed to get our hands on the new Mercian Field Hockey Ultimate goalie hand guards and have used them for a while. Looks like it’s time for a review now. A quick note for you goalies: Field Hockey Review regularly publishes goalie gear tips and tricks, and you’ll love their full field hockey goalie gear guide!

Look
Compared to the old style Mercian glove, this glove looks much sleeker and crisp. The foam has a nice shine to it and the blue is very striking, with the help of the vibrant orange Mercian logo. The colour combo brings together the design of the rest of the Extreme range. Like its predecessor, the glove is rounded at the edges which helps with the control of the rebound, however still brings together the new curved style that Mercian field hockey are looking at with their new gear, compared to the previous rigid design.

Feel
We were pleasantly surprised when we first used these field hockey gloves. They bring you the flexibility of a tube style glove, coupled with the rigid flat saving surface you find in the OBO Hi-Rebound Glove. This is where the Mercian Ultimate gloves excel. Unlike the obo glove, it allows full wrist movement, which we found often restricted us when using the OBO Hi-Rebound glove. A common problem with the old Ultimate glove was the strength of the foam in the flat surface.

Performance
Let’s talk shot rebounding. Looking at these Mercian Ultimate gloves, we found they often wouldn’t rebound shots out of bounds upon saving them. This was especially true when saving shots on the edge of the gloves. As you all know, this is something no keeper wants to happen. Ideally, you want the main saving surface to be strong and sturdy to cope with those hard hockey shots. With other field hockey goalie gloves, it’s very common to however experience one or two shots pushing past on a rebound. With the Mercian Ultimate gloves, especially shots from close range snuck past you and into the goal.

Additionally, we found diving with the goalie stick in-hand was surprisingly easy compared other gloves. We attribute this to the Mercian Ultimate’s open wrist and the ability to get the stick flat on the floor without having to rotate your wrist or altering my technique. That being said, the flat surface sometimes created a backwards angle along the floor, sometimes causing the ball to rebound up, instead of out. The rebound of this glove we found was lacking, compared to its rivals, with the ball sometimes dying, instead of being projected out of bounds. Sadly, you end up having to punch the ball out, rather than deflect it out.

The Final Word
Overall we felt this glove was a very good example of a hybrid type glove. It really is a perfect mix between the tube style and the more rigid flat saving edge of the OBO Hi-Rebound or TK goalie gloves. We found it a great glove for working along the floor, especially with sweeping the ball away with a smother. However, we question the glove’s ability to save top quality shots. Using a 10 point scale, we give this glove a 6/10 as it just doesn’t share the same high-quality features of its competitors. We recommend looking elsewhere!