SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1966

A ripple of slight bemusement echoes around the attendance of 12,504 in the old Cork Athletic Grounds midway through the second-half of the Cork county Senior hurling championship final as a U.C.C. substitute runs on the field.

Not only is Micheál Murphy wearing the college's famed black and red jersey with the famed skull and crossbones, but upon his head is a motorcycle crash helmet!

Though narrowly beaten by Avondhu, the Blackrock clubman, who had fractured his skull playing hurling a few years earlier, had taken the first major step in pioneering the idea of protective headgear for hurlers.

JANUARY, 1967

U.C.C. begin the process of introducing a specialised hurling helmet when furnishing two motions on the subject to the Cork County Convention, motions which are successfully brought to National Congress.

The motions asked Central Council to investigate the advisibility of hurling players wearing protective headgear and also that the Central Council design, or cause to be designed, protective headgear for hurlers.

Gradually the idea was gaining momentum.

SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 1968

Murphy and his crash helmet emerge from the subs' bench again, this time in Casement Park, Belfast, and though the pioneering hurler was unable to save U.C.C. from defeat by U.C.D. in the Fitzgibbon Cup final, he did score a goal wearing his protective headgear.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1969

U.C.C. travel from Cork to Dublin for the Fitzgibbon Cup weekend and when they crowd into the O'Toole Park dressing-rooms in Crumlin before their semifinal clash with U.C.G., the usual paraphernalia is supplemented by the unusual sight of 18 modified ice-hockey helmets!

Michael Murphy had imported these helmets from Canada. He had experimented with an American football helmet in practice but found it too heavy, then tried an ice-hockey helmet, eventually deciding on the Cooper model.

Six players donned the ice-hockey helmets in Crumlin that historic Saturday, including Murphy himself, tall Ray Cummins, full-forward Henry O'Sullivan and a man whose name was to become synonymous with the new protective gear, wing-back Donal Clifford.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1969

A day after their maiden voyage, the new helmets, on the same half-dozen heads, make their first Croke Park appearance as U.C.C. beat U.C.D. in the Fitzgibbon Cup final. Just on the call of time, Donal Clifford, complete with helmet, cuts over a fantastic point from the a line ball inside the 21-yard line on the Cusack Stand side.

SUNDAY, APRIL 13, 1969

'It was like old times in Thurles,' declared John D. Hickey, that great 'Irish Independent' G.A.A. scribe, after Cork beat Tipperary in a throbbing NHL semifinal. It was the dawning of a new age too as Donal Clifford, making his competitive debut for Cork, wore not only the Rebel 'blood and bandage' but the new protective headgear too, the Cloyne native thus ensuring himself a permanent place in the hurling record books as the first man to wear a helmet in a Senior inter-county match.

The rest, as they say is history, Clifford adding a succession of further firsts as his helmet saw action in the NHL final, the Munster final and the All-Ireland final by which time he had been joined on the Cork team by his U.C.C. colleague Ray Cummins, also sporting a black hurling helmet.

The dawn of 1970 saw several inter-county hurlers don the protective headgear and now, 40 years later, the NHL is well under way with the compulsory wearing of helmets part of the rule book for the first time.