Galway

With the establishment of the GAA and the hurling championship, there are women to be seen here, there and everywhere - active participants in peeling pots of potatoes for the Irish stew, ensuring their menfolk are strong and nourished for the clash of the ash.
There are women everywhere, but they’re all around the sidelines or they’re in the background, in the shadows. There is no suggestion that they should play. When he founded the Gaelic Athletic Association, Michael Cusack made a huge play at the time about the fact that the association would be open to everyone.&nbsp;&nbsp;
That hurling was not for the rich, but it was also for the poor; if you wanted to play, you could play.

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His everyone, however, was the rich man and the poor man.  There was no suggestion that women should play the games and indeed, a woman called Annie Butler wrote to Cusack at the time and said "look, I understand we can’t be playing members of the association but we could at least decorate the jerseys for the boys".&nbsp;
This was instructive of a mind and of a time, and absolutely reflective of the place of women in society at the time. It also indicated that there was as much as an appetite for women to run wild and free, lifting and lashing the ball of leather into their own skies.
So how did it change and when did it change? It began to change in the late 1890s and early 1900s, as a small group of women developed a more independent life within Irish society.&nbsp;

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Coming to Dublin and working as teachers or civil servants, they became involved in the Gaelic League and seeing men playing hurling in the Gaelic League - resolved to do the same thing for themselves.
The ideology of the time was that women should not be involved in such robust competition. However, all this was to change when in 1903, when a small group of women, assisted by a very small group of men, went to the Phoenix Park on a tram, up to the back corner of the park and started hitting a ball around in broad daylight.
Two women Máire Ní Chinnéide and Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha, both prominent Irish-language enthusiasts and cultural nationalists, were instrumental in the foundation of the sport and in 1903, drew up the rules.
The first All-Ireland took place in 1932, included 10 counties, and was won by Dublin.
Now, why was it given a different name? Well, of course, the story of the time is partly to do with the idea that there were games that were appropriate for men, where they could show their manliness, their courage, their vigour, their virility and all those things for which men are famous.&nbsp;

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If you look at pictures of those first games of camogie and you look at the clothes that women are wearing, it's a very restrictive dress and ankle-length skirts. You wonder how someone can move at all, let alone rise a ball.
Go forward in time and you look at the transformation. The flow of the play. How unbelievably competitive the game has become. The notion that women are less competitive than men or the notion that women are less sporting than men is, of course, a fallacy.

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But what is very real are the restrictions on women in sport within Irish society, both now and then, and the perceptions of women within society, both now and then.&nbsp;
It is true, undeniably true, that there are probably more women playing Gaelic games in Ireland now than ever played before.
But it’s still a small number compared to the number of men and their position and status within the sporting world, it could be argued is more second fiddle, than violin.

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This is the legacy of history and the fact that at the start of the sporting revolution, women were excluded. The place of women within hurling and the broader hurling world is to some extent reflective of the place of women in Irish society at the time. And it is also an enduring position of women within Irish society so it’s a reflection of both things, it could be argued.
Camogie was very much borne out of, or perhaps even alongside hurling but yet it had its own set of playing rules; In 1999, camogie moved to a 15-a-side game, which proved an absolute success.
Camogie needs hurling: it needs a joint-promotion strategy, it needs an image enhancement, it needs another big leap.
It is hurling a woman plays in her head, it is hurling that players generally train for but it’s not the game they always get to play. Camogie rules need a rethink, which thankfully seems to be forthcoming, and a chance to see if it moves closer to hurling.

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Dr Paul Rouse, School of History at UCD has called for the game to simply be called hurling:&nbsp;
To be a hurler is to be a unique part of Irish culture, to be a player of, and possibly a master of the greatest game, to be brave, skilful, strong, to be heroic.

Everything you ever wanted to know about camogie but were too afraid to ask

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