Meet the man who has been wearing personalised hurling helmets, including Batman, since 2008

Yesterday we featured a Batman hurling helmet and today we bring you a guy who has been blazing a personalised helmet trail since 2008.

Just over 24 hours ago we posted up this story, about a customised Batman huring helmet that was up for grabs on the GAA Swap Shop website. It has since disappeared from there, perhaps after the owner realised what a cracking bit of GAA kit he had.

Anyway, a short while after the story went up Naoise Waldron got in touch with us. Naoise claims to have had a Batman-styled helmet since around 2008 when a friend of his in Mycro hooked him up.

As proof, here’s a picture of Naoise sporting it in the Waterford County final, for Ballygunner against Tallow, in 2011.

Naoise has since ‘updated’ the colour scheme but kept the Batman logo.

But the Batman helmet is not the only personalised head protector that Naoise owns. From his UCC days he also has this baby in his locker.

The number relates to his then house number, in case you are wondering.

We asked Naoise if he ever got any grief from anyone for his on-pitch stylings and he told me that ‘when a lad marks me and sees the helmet he must just think I'm a weirdo, so that's half the battle’ and that he got a bit of slagging from his team-mates. Seems a small price to pay for standing out from the crowd.

Still, we are glad to see someone is taking on the baton of personalised helmets. We salute you Naoise, a true GAA trailblazer.