It's been a big summer for women's sports around the world but for camogie, familiar issues linger. Fixture issues, poor pitches. The Camogie Association launched Go Together yesterday in Croke Park: a campaign to get 25,000 people to attend the camogie All-Ireland finals on September 7. Away from these marquee days, there's clearly work that needs to be done to help camogie build the momentum it deserves.
Cork's Amy O'Connor is honest with her opinions on the game. The 22-year-old doesn't seek to be controversial. She's not issuing hot takes on her social media feeds. But like a few other famous Cork sporting legends, she calls it like she's it.
Back in January, the St Vincent's player expressed fair opinions that the sport of camogie was being marred by overrefeering.
“I don’t know if people are getting bored of the 0-10 to 0-9 games, the 0-11 0-10 games. They’re not absolute classics and there’s just free after free after free.”
The media will never refuse an honestly-aired opinion and the quotes gained a good bit of traction during the dregs of the GAA winter. O'Connor said the interview was a learning experience.
"I think those comments were blown out of proportion. I never said I didn’t enjoy playing camogie. I think it was taken out of context. I’m small in stature. All I was saying is I want more flow to the game. It wasn’t about removing shoulders or anything like that. As for the refs, you don’t blame them either. They’re doing their job. If you were to assess their performance based on the rules, they’d probably get a 10 out of 10.
"I probably have learned a lot about how the media works. I was accused of saying camogie was boring and hard to watch, which isn't what I said."
Still O'Connor is forthright with her opinions, and it's voices like hers that camogie needs right now. Google camogie this morning and you'll find more of her honest opinions on the state of camogie:
On being notified on game times 48 hours before they take place:
"We were told it was in Dublin at the weekend and that was it. You can’t plan anything. we were waiting until the Thursday morning before a Saturday game to find out we’re playing.
"Thursday morning? It’s not good enough. I thought that was wrong and I don’t think a senior men’s team would have to put up with that
"You can't plan anything. We’re inter-county players, but we have lives as well. It’s very unfair."
On playing Dublin on a poor pitch
"It was full of daisies and did the game no favours. It was shown on The Sunday Game and people could see the pitch, and that doesn’t do camogie any justice."
The ladies football and camogie finals are two of the marquee events on the Irish women's sport calendar, and while O'Connor is excited to see all of the coverage of women's sport, she thinks there's more that can be done to promote the game.
"It's really great to see and I think that more can be done. In terms of added incentives, I’m not sure what can be done. If you look at the ladies footballers, in fairness, 50,000 people at a game, that’s unbelievable. Hopefully we’ll get over the 25,000 people at the camogie final, whichever county is in it. Dublin was in the last two ladies football finals, the final is in Croke Park in Dublin. That probably does add a couple of thousand people."
Ultimately, though, O'Connor is hugely positive about where camogie can go:
Men’s hurling is unbelievable to watch and we can make camogie like that as well, if we just promote it more, get more people at games and leave them flow more.
