- a correction and physics lesson grafted to the end of slate.com’s “The Craziest Men in Sports”
It’s about hurling in Ireland. Anyone who read “Does Football Have a Future?” in the 1/31/11 New Yorker will wince at the Slate article’s (probably unintended) implication that rich American athletes can buy their way out of head trauma, but it’s a worthwhile article for sobering passages such as:
What sets hurlers apart from their hockey counterparts is their ingenuity in dealing with helmet hatred. Using a hacksaw and filer, Maguire has removed the two problematic horizontal bars from his helmet while keeping a third, vertical bar that runs from his forehead to his chin. Maguire is not the only goalkeeper who has taken to redesigning his facemask. According to Christy O’Connor, who played 20 seasons in goal and wrote about the culture of hurling in The Club, the majority of today’s best goalkeepers “are definitely playing without some of the bars.” …
The decision to alter a facemask isn’t one hurlers take lightly. As soon as they modify their helmets, players become ineligible for insurance coverage. This is a bigger deal than it would be for top American athletes: Since hurling remains an amateur sport in Ireland, none of its star players have a lot of money to burn. (The very few players that have endorsement deals earn roughly 5,000 euros per season, O’Connor estimates.) While the GAA maintains a small fund to help defray healthcare costs, players with serious injuries are likely to be responsible for at least some portion of the cost of treatment.
To learn more about all this, follow The Concussion Blog. See also the 2/19/11 NYT article that starts like this:
Before he shot himself fatally in the chest Thursday, the former Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson sent family members text messages requesting that his brain tissue be examined for the same damage recently found in other retired players, two people aware of the messages said Saturday night.
