The best way to support camogie players is to go to a game
ONE thing we know about this controversy is that it won’t be one for very much longer.
Even before this morning’s announcement from the Camogie Association, the clear feeling was that common sense or at least a self-preservation instinct would kick in.
Soon enough the skort will be an item of retro clothing, only not quite the type that people seek out and pay above the odds.
There will be photographers in The Ragg to see Cork and Waterford this weekend. Yet it’s inconceivable now the officials will prevent them from playing in shorts.
Next week we’ll be onto a different story. That’s what the news cycle does – it moves. Same thing with social media: a new day, a new debate and pretty soon everybody forgets the whole issue that had everybody so wound up so recently. Except those at the centre of it, they’ll scratch their head and wonder what happened there. How were the eyes of everybody on us for a few moments? Where have they all gone?
Rena Buckley made many great points on our 42FM podcast this week. For me the most arresting one was her initial reaction to the debacle. Why are we talking about stuff around women’s sport, but not actually about the content of the game? You could sense the exasperation.
Leaving a like on Instagram, a politician demanding the Camogie Association come forth to explain themselves – these things are easy. Promoting the game to a wider audience, teasing out the myriad issues with integration. This is hard and requires a fulsome effort.
As does going to a game versus dropping a supportive comment on the platform of your choice.
Like Gerry Cinnamon, I’m not the ideal person to be lecturing on life – especially when it comes to the attendance of inter-county camogie games.
I made it to my mid 40s having gone to a total of zero, and that’s how it would have stayed but for the fact my daughter plays and developed an interest in Cork after going to see them beat Waterford in the 2023 All-Ireland final. So, the next year she needed a taxi driver and, yes, what a hero, I agreed to drive my child to a couple of games.
Honestly, I was quite looking forward to attending a match. Camogie has long been on my list of sports where you will see a high level of athleticism and skill while being able to park right next to the venue. These things become important at a certain age. Irish basketball and athletics are also on this list.
I expected a decent spectacle but was taken aback at the levels of accuracy and athleticism. Both my kids like to sit down at the front at games, where I’d normally go much further back for a better perspective on the game. Yet next to the pitch you do get a true appreciation for the speed of movement, reaction times and the force of the hits.
Watching high-level hurling for me is one of life’s joys. The quality is so high that it’s one of the few things that can take you out of your head and put you in the moment for more than an hour. I didn’t expect quite the same lift-off with camogie, a sport where I didn’t have any feel for the backstory. I probably only knew about three or four players on the field when we went to Cork-Dublin at Páirc Uí Chaoimh last June.
Fast enough I was glancing at the programme after every play. Who gave that stick pass? Who pinged that over on the run from that angle? Who took that hit and bounced straight back up?
By the time the All-Ireland final happened I had become an Olympics-style expert with a theory on why Sorcha McCartan should start and who should make way.
The most compelling hurling games last season were Cork against Limerick, twice, and Cork-Clare in the final. The nervous system was put to an equal test in the camogie final between Cork and Galway. If the timeliness of Tony Kelly’s moments of genius swung the hurling Clare’s way then Ashling Thompson’s will saw Cork over the line.
Thompson’s distribution, decision making and hard running over the game’s duration were at peak levels, yet her refusal to lose contests, major or small, was remarkable.
One moment didn’t amount to much in the run of the match, but is still memorable. Happened in the 24th minute with the teams level.
Thompson, unusually, fumbled a puckout and then a pickup. So she was under duress when Galway forward Aoife Donohue rolled her away from the ball and onto the ground. In came Niamh McPeake who roll-lifted time and again to rise the ball, but somehow couldn’t because Thompson had managed to trap the ball under her knee – while getting off the ground at the same time.
From a position of weakness, she nudged in front of McPeake, got a flick on the ball with her foot and then rose it to hand. Donohue joined the fray again and had to foul to stop Thompson’s escape.
It’s a lesson in bloody-mindedness and ingenuity that should be shown at the start of every Cúl Camp. There is the beautiful, skilful side to the game, but this is equally stunning for its sheer defiant intent. Thompson was in the heart of many a confrontation that day, and fittingly was again at the final whistle, scrapping for the breaking ball against two opponents, cajoling the contest her way.
There were just over 27,800 people in Croke Park that day, and a lot less at the couple of other camogie games we were at during the year.
Go to a Munster senior hurling match today and you’ll be struck by the throngs of people, all ages. At Cork and Tipp’s recent game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh there were gangs of teenage boys and in particular girls. Were one quarter of them to go a camogie match then Cork’s gates would increase by levels of multitude.
But you can’t tell anybody to go to a game, in so far as it’s not right to compel anybody to wear a skort instead of a pair of shorts. People will go where they wish and watch what they want.
My sole point is that if you like hurling as a spectacle then you will almost certainly like camogie, and maybe, like me, you’ve underestimated how good it is nowadays.
Hopefully I’ll get to a few games with my daughter this season, even if she is fast approaching the age where she does not want to be seen in public with her dad. As such she’s also approaching the age where a lot of girls stop playing sport.
I’m forever averse to the idea of sporting role models. Perhaps doing this job for years you realise that elite level players are just people like the rest of us, with all of the same failings. To elevate them is to do yourself a disservice, and it’s not fair on them either. Just enjoy their skill, that is enough.
And yet, kids will inevitably look up to players and probably pay more attention to them than you, at least when it comes to the game. One county player was particularly kind to my daughter last year; took the time to answer a couple of questions and asked a few back herself. In the process she added to a passion that will, fingers crossed, last a lifetime.
Our 12-year-old played a match last night and a couple of things went right for her. There are other days when it doesn’t break her way. But she still goes and still likes it, I think. She isn’t much one for talking about it all. But at times you’ll see touches and flourishes that have been straight lifted from her favourite player. When they go right you see the quiet satisfaction and sense of pride she has. If I had all the money in the world I couldn’t buy the feeling I have then. Far more important, neither could she. That’s the game, it’s value you couldn’t even begin to calculate, this week or any other.
The 42
