Scrap the Helmets
Talking Balls Comments
Talking Balls was sitting back last Sunday, relaxing as you do, with the sound on the telly turned down, as you do, due to the presence of rather unwelcome visitors (friends of the wife’s do you understand) watching Portumna, wondering why Joe Canning wasn’t hitting the frees.
Amidst dozes it suddenly occurred to us that Joe has obviously traded his familiar red Cooper helmet for a fancy new greem marc helmet. Presumably Joe decided to benefit from the marc helmet scrappage scheme which offers you a deal if you trade in your old reliable helmet for a new marc one. According to the marc website it states that:
The GAA Injury Scheme will only provide cover in respect of Hurling claims provided the injured claimant is wearing a Helmet Which conforms to the NSAI Standard IS:355. ie Mycro, Marc or Azzurri helmets.
However the Willis insurance business to which it links also goes on to say:
The injury scheme is funded entirely from Club and GAA funds with no outside (e.g.insurance) involvement. There is no legal obligation on the GAA to provide such a scheme. Risk is an inherent factor in sport, as in life. When members voluntarily take part in Club Activities, they accept the risks that such participation may bring.
In the first instance this confirms that traditional and much loved helmets such as Cooper, widely chosen by many players will disqualify your claim. The second clause contradicts this as it suggests that you play at your own risk and therefore take your oil if you get split.
So there you go. With all hurlers coming to terms with their shiny new helmets, the question has been asked by the likes of Paddy Heaney of the Irish News whether the GAA is missing an opportunty to market hurling better. Now straight away it has to be said that Paddy Heaney wouldn’t know a hurlers helmet if he was asked to polish one, but I suppose things were quiet this last week or so, and he was a few inches short of fulfilling his obligations Against the Breeze, so to speak.
Paddy has suggested that the likes of Kilkenny for example could all wear similar helmets adorned with an image of a Cat for example. He also advocated players wearing their names on the backs of their shirts, all sound ideas in theory but why should they do this at all? In fact in the nanny state we live in, Talking Balls believes that the fact that hurlers are forced to wear a helmet at all is nonsense.
Paddy obviously has obsessive compulsive disorder as he finds the sight of players turning out to hurl with a dolly mixture array of hurling helmets to be undesirable and wants team uniforms to include matching helmets. Next they’ll be wearing matching boots, gloves and underpants, hi-fiving and your the man. May sound good on paper, but that’s just not hurling Paddy.
