GAA make headway on helmet use

GAA/ Central Council: The GAA is slowly reacting to the increasing costs of running intercounty teams. Central Council agreed at the weekend to allocate €2.6 million to help cover team expenses, which will be distributed independently of counties' own expenditure.

While that represents almost €1 million extra compared to 2005, it's still relatively small money in the overall picture of intercounty expenditure - which last year totalled around €16.7 million. Yet, it does reflect the GAA's awareness of both the increase in costs, and the difficulties that many counties have in meeting them.

Last year, Central Council allocated just €1.77 million, a small increase on the €1.4 million allocated in 2004. Figures released earlier this year highlighted the growing costs of team expenditure at county board level, which was seen to increase by 55 per cent over the past three seasons. Those figures also saw 12 county boards suffer a loss for the year.

Cork, for example, spent €1.2 million preparing county teams across the various grades. Galway were next highest at €1.06 million, and only six counties spent less than €300,000. Clearly, the Central Council's €2.6 million will have limited impact on overall costs.

"I think the €2.6 million is more or less in line with inflation," says Leinster council secretary Michael Delaney. "But it's probably an indication as well that it's been another good year for the GAA.

"But we'd be a bit removed from the individual costs of county boards. They make their own submissions to the finance committee and Croke Park, although we do make our own contribution to county expenditures based on the number of games played in the Leinster championship."

The Leinster Council last year handed out €337,835 towards team expenses across the 12 counties in the province - a small increase on the €311,635 distributed in 2004. But the Central Council figure of €2.6 million wasn't the only piece of good news for county boards this weekend.

It was also announced that the amount of sponsorship money distributed to clubs and county boards would increase to €2.9 million in 2006.

Another decision of Central Council could see the use of helmets become mandatory at all levels of hurling within the next five years, according to the GAA's head of games Pat Daly.

Last weekend's meeting approved the new ruling that makes it mandatory for players to wear helmets with face masks in all hurling games up to and including under-21 level, and that, says Daly, effectively clears the way for a similar rule at senior level.

While the new helmet rule comes into effect from April 1st, it has been in the making for several years and is already mandatory at minor level. But the GAA isn't just concerned about the wearing of helmets, but also the standard of helmets.

"We have been trying to ensure there is a minimum standard in terms of what protection the helmet needs to offer," says Daly, "because a lot of helmets on the market are not meeting that standard.

"We have more or less brought that to finality now, in that all helmet suppliers must provide the minimum safety standards we feel are necessary. That's been given the safety code IS355, which should be stamped on the helmet. But there are other issues as well here, such as the way some players modify their helmets."

The new rule means that from next month all hurlers up to and including under-21 level must have their helmets on and the face masks down, or else they'll be told to leave the field of play. The rule is also intended to end of habit of players throwing up the face mask at certain stages of the game.

Daly believes once all underage players get into the habit of wearing helmets, their mandatory use at senior level won't be a major issue: "I think it's inevitable that this rule will extend to senior level within the next five or six years," he added.

"Considering the way the thing has evolved, starting back at under-14 level and so on, it's really only a natural extension, and, of course, all the medical people are saying that helmets should be mandatory at all levels now.

"Obviously, some of the more established players who still choose not to wear helmets would need some time to adjust, but once it becomes the norm at under-21 level I think it will be natural for players coming through to continue to wear a helmet."

Central Council has also allocated €450,000 to help counties absorb the cost of distributing more helmets under the new rule. Such grant aid has long been made available, but the figure is almost double that of last year, and intended to increase the level of subsidy that county boards can offer their players in the purchasing of helmets.