By
Norman Freeman
She’s telling you how to get used to it.

What about this for initiative! The same young female sports psychologist who produced very helpful and consoling videos that help put defeat into perspective is now showing admirable resource in relation to the compulsory wearing of helmets.

We all know that many good players find that wearing a helmet completely puts them off their stride or their stroke. Great hurlers like Ken McGrath, John Mullane, Chunky Hayes or Mark Foley would say that wearing a helmet cramps their style, makes them feel very uncomfortable or even gives them a headache.

This girl, Marian K. from Muckalee in County Kilkenny, who holds a degree in psychology from Trinity College Dublin, has done a random survey of those hurlers who find it so difficult to play while wearing a helmet. She did not confine her interviews to star players. She listened carefully to veteran players from the junior ranks, fellows with balding heads and substantial bellies, who have been hurling all their lives without benefit of helmet.

She is to deliver a lecture shortly and during it will quote just why some players are reluctant to wear helmets.

Here’s what a stout fellow from Garryspillane had to say: “I tried a helmet once but I thought it would smother me. That night I had a fierce nightmare. I was down a small narrow shaft in a coal-mine and it was closing in all round me and it was too narrow for me to turn round and get out. I woke up roaring. The wife said I must be after getting an attack of claustrophobia.”

Another quote from a lanky veteran from the Bray Emmets club: “God knows I tried my hardest to wear it. But I had to take it off when I was taking frees or sideline cuts. I was putting it on and taking it off the whole match. Once when I was fiddling with the strap the ball went right past me and ended up in the goal. After that I was taken off myself. That night I flung that bloody helmet into the Dargle.”

A veteran player from Buffer’s Alley had this to say: “Down this part of the country you can be badly put out wearing a helmet, especially if you’re a forward. Waiting for a ball to drop out of the sky and next thing the back marking you pushes his hurl up under the back of your helmet and it goes down over your eyes. Until the referees cop on to this I won’t wear a helmet.”

The central theme of her forthcoming lecture is just plain common sense. Players will get used to wearing helmets during games if they by put them on at every opportunity. OK, they cannot shave nor kiss goodbye to their partners or wives while wearing a helmet. Nor can they enjoy a meal unless the bars of the helmet are widely spaced enough for a food-laden fork to enter their mouths.

But what’s wrong with wearing a helmet while travelling to work, by car or on the bus or on the train? What’s wrong with bringing in cattle from a field while wearing a helmet? Or sawing a plank, or laying a floor or sitting in front of a computer in the workplace? Or at one’s own PC, surfing the Internet? Wearing a helmet won’t stop any player going on Facebook or Twitter.

She’s engaged a leading cartoonist to add a bit of humour to the talk. One slide shows a fellow sitting on the toilet reading the paper while wearing his helmet. Another shows a helmeted fellow engaged in a passionate encounter in bed with his girlfriend. Another shows a hot day at the seaside, with a guy leaping into the waves wearing only a helmet, while bikini-clad women hold their hands to their mouths in hilarity.

Marian K is an astute promoter of her lecture. She will try to persuade An tUachtarán Christy Cooney and An tẤrd Stiurtheóir Padraig Duffy to attend and to address the gathering at some stage. More than that, she will try to persuade them to wear helmets
throughout the evening, as a way of giving good example. If they agree, she will supply them with specially-fitted helmets with the GAA crest to the fore.

Ambitious girl that she is, she will also approach the Patron of the GAA, Archbishop Dermot Clifford, asking him attend and to speak. She will offer to provide him with a stylish helmet painted an impressive episcopal purple with a gold cross emblazoned on the front. Having this eminent personage as an exemplar could be very influential.

She herself will wear a helmet from start to finish. She has featured this lecture prominently on her website and already has plenty of hits looking to book seats and get the special advance rate of €20. (€35 will be charged at the door). She is encouraging all those attending to wear a helmet, female and male, young and old.

OK, she is doing all this to make money and to promote the other services she provides, but her efforts are bound to help overcome the reluctance of some to wear helmets. Maybe the time will come that when a player retires it will be said of him “He wore that helmet with great pride. Now he’s hung it up. He’s talking of donating it to the local GAA museum.”