Increasing visibility of women in sport

KILLINAN END

One of the great breakthroughs over the past decade has been the sheer visibility of women in Irish sport. The brilliant athletes who performed in Paris – not least our own Sharlene Mawdsley – have given extraordinary example to any young girl watching on. It is not a development to be taken lightly. As recently as 1984 the Olympic Games saw the first women’s Marathon, while the 10,000 metres debuted only in 1988.

In that respect the GAA can maybe claim to have been an early mover with the Camogie championship starting as far back as 1932 - at the same time almost half a century into the GAA’s existence. Some of the broader milestones for women are maybe worth noting for comparative purposes. While Countess Markievicz became the Minister for Labour in first Dáil, it was a wait of over half a century before Máire Geoghegan Quinn was appointed government Minister in 1979.

Even in between many of the female TDs were facilitated only as widows of male TDs. An interesting example of this was a lady who had an eventful 1932 around the time the GAA was running its first Camogie championship. Paddy Reynolds was a Cumann na nGaedheal (forerunner to FG) TD in Leitrim and was shot dead during the 1932 General Election campaign by a former RIC officer who was in dispute over his pension provision. Perhaps the state reflected the devalued currency of a life just a decade after the War of Independence and Civil War when it imposed a sentence of just a year in prison on the offender.

Even the trophy for the Senior Camogie championship, the O’Duffy cup, is called after a man. Albeit this was a man of some substance who contributed much to the sport of Camogie. Seán O’Duffy was born in a tiny place called Killawalla about six miles from Westport. It would be very close to the home of the great footballer, Cora Staunton, and the parish of Cillian O’Connor. Born in 1886 O’Duffy moved to Dublin as a young man and became involved in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. After stillness fell on all his youthful wildness, he married a lady called Kathleen McKeown from Omeath, Co. Louth. Kathleen was a prominent Camogie referee including overseeing the 1949 All-Ireland Final. It is tempting to tweak the old line that never grows old; “one from Mayo, the other from Louth – neither a hurling stronghold” but that maybe is not telling the full story.

Louth played in two Camogie finals in the early years of the championship and performed well if unsuccessfully against Cork. Back in 2019 when attending the funeral in Killawalla it was interesting to learn that the woman in question had played for Mayo in an All-Ireland Senior Camogie final back in 1959. You never quite know where you are talking!

Some elements of Camogie history are curious. Although Cork were early movers in the 1930s, they went from 1941 to 1970 without a title though this hides an interesting backstory in Camogie. Several disputes emerged over the years and Cork refused to participate in the championships of 1944-52 in a dispute over female-only administration for Camogie. Meanwhile, Dublin had a gripe about the exclusion of Hockey players from playing Camogie, likely to have put Dublin at a significant disadvantage considering many Convent schools in the capital embraced Hockey as a sport. In 2005 the Rebel county’s Camogie players won their 22nd title, the same year the Senior hurlers took their 30th. Last Sunday the ladies drew level. Will they ever fall behind again?

Kilkenny did not play in a final until 1970 and won one at the third attempt in 1974. Though late starters in terms of success, their contribution since has been very impressive. Between their 1972 and 1995 final defeats they won twelve titles and have not been too far away very often. Despite a long history of hurling success Tipperary too took a while to really make its mark in Camogie. The jubilee team of 1999 got the county off the starting blocks and gave momentum to a glorious run of success. Of course, the county had its moments down the years when reaching seven finals including 1979 and 1984 without success before the door was broken down in ’99.

Certainly, there are chinks of light in Tipperary Camogie right now. While the Seniors have taken a few hits in recent years with narrow semi-final defeats they will take more solace from Galway’s performance against Cork than they would have from last year’s final. On that day Waterford walked into a storm and gave themselves no chance. On a line through Galway, it can be said that Tipp are very much in the mix.

The Junior team’s slow start at the weekend gave them an uphill struggle but there can be no doubt they thoroughly deserved to win. They fell behind 1-3 to 0-1 early on – from then on it was Tipp 0-11 Laois 0-5. Hard to argue with that. When the Tipp Seniors won that breakthrough All-Ireland in 1999, they beat Kilkenny 0-12 to 1-8, the very same scoreline. They didn’t do too badly afterwards.