IN ALL FAIRNESS - Areas camogie can make improvements in

So, 2023 passes in a Gaelic Games field sense without Tipperary having won an All-Ireland of some description in the major competitions. Last Sunday was the last chance of having something to celebrate but the junior camogie team came up short against a fine Clare side at Croke Park.

It’s a measure of the passion for Gaelic Games in this county that the success of a year is largely measured by All-Ireland glory and certainly this year has been a disappointment, despite the committed efforts of the players and managements involved.

An assessment of the how and why Tipperary weren’t successful takes place in those years and while it is easy to point to the deficiencies within the county, you also have to look at the growth of Gaelic Games across the country and the greater competitiveness among the counties.

Camogie is a perfect example and while Tipperary think we are putting in the hard work to get the Premier county back up to the top level of Cork, Galway, and Kilkenny, but so are the likes of Clare who won the junior final on Sunday, and Waterford who reached a first senior final in 74 years. It is harder than ever, not only to win an All-Ireland, but also to challenge for it.

2023 was certainly a good year for Tipperary camogie with Munster titles in senior and junior level, improved league campaigns in both grades, and reaching the latter stages of the All-Ireland Championships, which they failed to get to in 2022. The challenge is to improve on that in 2024 and that has to be ambition of everyone involved.

One area Tipperary need to improve in, and it is an aspect in the men’s game too in hurling and football, is where are the quick players. For some reason in this county, we are not blessed with pace. Looking the senior and junior camogie teams most recent games against Waterford and Clare, Tipp lacked enough hard-running players which can break open an opponent and create more scoring chances.

It is the same in hurling and football where we lack real power to break a tackle. Why is that? It is hard to think that we don’t have players who are quick or is it that we don’t focus enough on athletic development of players at a young enough age.

The one thing that is always said of Tipperary hurlers, male and female, is that they have all the skills and are great sticks-men & women. We are, but in the modern game this will only take you so far. Strength and power are now needed to go with it at inter-county level to have a chance of being successful.

Considering that Tipperary GAA and Camogie and linked up with the world-renowned Setanta College in Thurles at underage level, you would hope as the years go on that we will see more and more athletically sound players come onto adult panels from where Tipperary are on a par with their rivals, and then it is all about skill and talent.

As a spectacle, camogie has come on a lot in recent years, helped by the decision to allow more physicality in the games from which the girls can express themselves more. However, what wasn’t considered with that move was the retention of offences belonging to the previous virtual non-contact sport, such as the yellow card for barging. Now, whether it is hurling or camogie, barging is a foul and should be penalised as such, but not with a yellow card offence as it is in camogie.

It is not right that a player such as Tipperary’s Ciara Brennan is sent off in an All-Ireland final for such a minor offence, despite the referee getting the decision wrong in any case as Brennan was the sinned rather than sinner in that play. Yellow cards should only be branded for serious foul play, but barging is not that, bar it is aggressive and those are very rare indeed.

Defenders of the rule will claim it is about protecting the players but what is happening is that players are being humiliated when they are being yellow carded for such offences. Most players don’t deliberately set out to barge when in possession of the ball, sometimes they just don’t make enough of a move around an opponent and end up running into them, and currently that warrants a yellow card, tell me how that benefits the game?

I would love to see the Tipperary Camogie Board take up the charge on this and bring forward a motion to next year’s camogie congress to amend the barging rule and remove the yellow card punishment for such an offence. It’s a penalty that currently doesn’t fit the crime.