Jesus I remember getting the buy & sell magazine every week searching for one early 00’s. Like gold dust.
Young lads spend ridiculous money on the old Coopers
I once mugged @Fat_Pox off good and proper paying €50 for an old school Cooper worth about €300.
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They were coming in from Canada weren’t they ?
Originally they were I think. The ones the young lads are mad for are the old ones with the stitching on them like this one
Fairly sure they were old hockey helmets
With the Gerry Cleere tweaked faceguard?
Think he eventyually got run out of manufacture by threats from Mycro.
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They’re the new craft whisky. You know which slave picked the cotton to make the thread.
My cousin had a right number a few years ago. He was buying them, reconditioning them and reselling for €300-350 a pop. Making about €100 profit on each one. Not bad for a 17 year old at the time.
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The father used have a Cooper one in the shed. He finished up hurling in late 30s (I think his last game was 38/39) so he must have called it a day 1982/83. I wouldn’t say many were wearing the helmets at that stage, particularly not the older fellas. When I started off we were waiting for Mycro one to come (my auld lad knew some rep who was getting it on the cheap 
). The father found the old Cooper. The chin strap was gone, so we had a bit of bailing twine to hold it together. I was also only nine or ten years of age so the helmet was a bit big so I think I only used it once or twice.
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My uncle only wore a helmet once on the insistence of my grandmother. Same game a fella pulled down on his head and split the helmet in half, he never wore one again as he felt it was only inviting fellas to flake you.
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The newer Coopers sold by yer man in Ballinasloe are certified. The ones that were worn back in the 80s and 90s (the same as the Golas) are not. These are the ones going for mad money.
There’s fellas stitching the helmets now to give it the look whatever that’s about!
The thing with the GAA is insurance, if a fella is hurt wearing a non compliant helmet and guard then they ain’t insured - it would be useful if helmets that are compliant were made a bit sleeker than what’s there at the moment
Mycro was a mixture of myler and crowley I think two Cork fellas who started it
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There was a tragic tale over the road from me. A good friend of mine had an older brother (maybe a decade older) that was deceased. My buddy was a good soccer player but wasn’t allow hurl. Didn’t realise til my parents explained what happened. Anyway, his deceased brother was a good hurler in his day. Playing a minor match on a sweltering hot day, he discarded the helmet. You can figure out what happened yet. The fear of that meant all of us on the road always wore our helmets. I took it off once in a schools match in first year, as there didn’t seem to be any rules about them, and all the lads were taking them off so I wanted to be cool FFS. The father found out and nearly hit me a clatter when I came home
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Was it 2005 helmets became compulsory? Lads wearing faceguards for the first time and struggling to see out so just guessing where the sliothar was and pulling hard, it was a hairy few months.
Twas the best thing they ever did
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I remember Padraic Maher and Pa Bourke took off their helmets in the dying minutes of Thurles Sars Munster Club defeat by Newtownshandrum in November 2009 as a sort of last hurrah.
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Joe used to wear MARC, then the GOLA boys came a knockin’…
Probably aping Ben and Jerry.