THE ALL-BLACKS have their Haka, the Foreign Legion have their Kepi hat - and UCC sports teams have the skull-and-crossbones on all their team strips.

"No other university has anything like it - it goes back to the early days of the college," says UCC's director of sport, Kieran Dowd.

This is why the college's president, Professor Gerard T Wrixen has launched a campaign to ensure that the precious insignia is not lost in a sea of corporate logos.

The UCC University Examiner reported that Dowd told a recent emergency meeting of the Athletics Union: "The skull-and-crossbones has been destroyed and should be put in its rightful place." Corporate logos, some of which Dowd said were a "phenomenal size and most unacceptable" are to be banished to the sleeves and collar area of strips and must be no larger than eight by one-and-a-half centimetres.

Another big change is that clubs will no longer be allowed to make financial sponsorship agreements. A new committee will centralise all these decisions. Dowd sees the role of this committee as being to ensure that rules on logos are followed and also to give potential sponsors assurance that any agreements they enter into will be adhered to.

There had been disquiet on the part of some clubs that the new arrangements would hamper them from getting sponsorship. Dowd denies this, saying that extra money has been made available to the sponsorship committee.

"It is up to us to try and claw that back, but no club will be worse off," he says. Sports clubs will still be able to organise promotional t-shirts and complimentary drinks off their own bat, despite Wrixen's desire to cut down on excessive on-campus drinking.

The University Examiner quoted Dowd as saying that, despite this aim, he is a "student's man".