US gets ahead of the helmet conundrum

AMERICAN sport can offer an experienced perspective on the issue of compulsory helmet wear, their mandatory use having come into effect for hurlers this season.

Some in the GAA are concerned there will be a diminishing level of player recognition as result of the new rule.

Yet in the US, where helmets are compulsory in ice hockey’s National Hockey League, gridiron’s National Football League and for batters in Major League Baseball, there have long been plenty of other ways for sports to get their stars out front and centre.

Helmets have been mandatory in the NHL since 1979, although hockey players not wearing them at the time were permitted to continue not wearing one. In fact, Craig MacTavish, who began his NHL career in 1979 with the Boston Bruins, became the last player not to wear one up until he retired after 19 seasons in 1997.

John Dellapina, the NHL’s director of media relations points out that names and squad numbers were already in place on hockey players’ backs although the fast-moving nature of game and inter-changing positional play did mean there was some concern that recognition would be diminished with the mandatory introduction of helmets.

“There was that fear that it would be harder to tell the players apart,” Dellapina said. “That we would lose those old days of guys with long flowing hair floating down the ice and that sort of thing.

“It was the same thing people say about (American) football because you can’t see the players and that’s always been something some people have talked it but, safety-wise, there’s just no way of ever going back.”

Numbers have always been important signifiers for America’s brightest stars with clubs retiring them as marks of respect to their greatest servants.

And anywhere American fans gather to talk sport, the greats are often referred to by their numbers alone, ‘99’ being the shorthand for ice hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky, while NFL quarterback hero Brett Favre will forever be ‘Number 5’ and baseball legends Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson synonymous as 3, 7 and 42.

And then there’s the reason that helmets have become mandatory in the first place.

“Safety was and is such an overriding concern that concerns over recognition would have paled in comparison,” Mike Teevan, media relations manager at Major League Baseball, said of his sport’s introduction of mandatory helmet use for batters in 1971.

“And after the 2007 season we made it mandatory that base coaches (the team staff members who pass on information to runners) have to wear helmets as well. There was a tragedy in the minor leagues in 2007 when a base coach was killed by a batted ball in a minor league game so it became required for base coaches in the field in 2008.”

As for hurling’s particular issues, Larry McCarthy has a unique perspective as both chairman of the New York GAA and associate professor in sports marketing at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

The Cork man points to the nature of the game with its rigid positional play and also the accessibility of even the most well-known of hurlers within their communities as factors to allay any misgivings about a lack of recognition.

“I don’t think it’s a genuine concern,” McCarthy said. “They put helmets on hockey players here years and years ago and I don’t think it lost anything. And with hurling, fans recognise players from the positions that they start in and there’s always a number on the jersey, which is an identifier right there.

“What’s more, the inter-county player is a well-known specimen and I don’t think they’re going to be losing any identity because of this to any great extent.”