Move to make mouthguard use compulsory

AN effort is being made for mouthguards to be compulsory for all GAA players. The move is being proposed by the Burrishole club and will come before the Mayo county convention next week.

The club’s assistant treasurer, Margaret O’Malley, is a dental health educator and she has completed an extensive study in nine to 13-year old children. Over 500 were surveyed and she said that it is now hoped that the wearing mouthguards will become mandatory in the GAA similar to rugby.

“Hopefully, the motion will make the GAA look into creating a policy for the use of gumshields as dental damage can be a major problem for players,” said O’Malley who works for HSE West.

“It is hard to ask parents to make their kids wear a gumshield without it being an official policy of the club or the GAA. If it is an official policy parents can row in behind it and once they become aware of the benefits they can make an informed decision. In rugby the have the ‘no guard, no game’ policy and everyone just does it now. If you damage a permanent tooth the repairs can cost a fortune, but the maintenance must be kept on for life. For the sake of wearing a mouth guard it is cheap in comparison,” she said.

As part of her research Margaret has discovered that only 22% of those surveyed wore mouth guards while playing contact sports and of that figure almost 60% were rugby players.

Reports suggest that up to 90% of people begin to use mouth guards after suffering some kind of dental trauma, but according to Margaret, by that stage it is too late.

“A mouth guard spreads the loads of a hit evenly over all of the teeth. Many GAA players complain that they cannot breathe correctly with it in or that it makes talking difficult. But whenever I give a presentation I wear the mouthguard and can talk properly. Damage can be caused by a small knock and sometimes this damage will not register for a few months,” said O’Malley, who is hopeful that delegates at next Tuesday’s convention will send the proposal forward to GAA Central Council for ratification.