Mairead Teehan: No guarantee skorts rule will be changed
Offaly's Mairead Teehan picked up her Player of the Month award for April after their victory in the Division 2A final but there was no getting away from the issue that has generated a blitz of headlines beyond the sports pages.
The skorts v shorts saga has been picked up by news outlets all over the English-speaking world and has led to female parliamentarians donning shorts in Leinster House, ever since the Dublin-Kilkenny joint-protest in their Leinster championship clash 10 days ago.
The controversy ratcheted up another notch with Munster Camogie taking the decision to defer the Munster final between Cork and Waterford less than 24 hours before throw-in, after both teams had indicated on the previous Wednesday that they intended to play in shorts and would refuse to play the game in skorts.
Disenchantment among players on the issue had been brewing for some time with a GPA survey indicating that 70% had experienced discomfort wearing skorts and 83% wanted the option to wear shorts.
However, at last year's Congress in Waterford, two motions were tabled proposing the inclusion of shorts as part of the playing uniform, both of which were defeated, with motions from Great Britain and Tipperary being rejected by 55% and 64% of delegates respectively.
With no further vote on the issue allowed on the issue until 2027, the players decided to scale up their protests, resulting in the stand-off of recent weeks.
With Camogie Association President Brian Molloy announcing a Special Congress on 22 May to resolve the skorts issue, amid the threat of fixture chaos, Teehan is cautiously optimistic the issue will be resolved, though she is wary that the delegates could yet row in behind the status quo again.
"Obviously they're after calling for the Special Congress, which is great, but like that's not a guarantee either that the rule will be changed," Teehan tells RTÉ Sport.
"It's the same delegates that are going to this Congress to vote.
"We can make noise about it now and in fairness to the media, it's been widely shared. But we still don't have any real power in terms of changing that, if the delegates don't actually listen and vote to allow that choice for us.
"You're relying on county boards and to survey their clubs, talk to their players and say what do you want? And then for the delegates to take that to the camogie board. But you just hope that the delegates would listen to what is going on around the country.
"I suppose I don't want to get my hopes up too much. But it does seem to be going in the direction that change will happen.
"Fingers crossed, they will vote for change for us."
While Dublin and Kilkenny were staging their protest in Blanchardstown, Offaly were facing Wexford in the other semi-final.
Teehan and her team-mates were well aware that a protest was planned from their discussions in the GPA and Offaly were prepared to join that protest having discussed it during the week.
However, after word reached them that Wexford were wearing skorts - they have since indicated that they would wear shorts for their upcoming Leinster final against Kilkenny - Offaly decided against protesting on the day to ensure the match would go ahead.
"I suppose it had been something that had been going on kind of in the background with the GPA for a couple of months up to this," Teehan told RTÉ Sport.
"Our match against Wexford was on the Saturday. We were talking about this on the Thursday, the Friday, trying to figure out what were we going to do.
"We had talked to our panel about it, whether we'd be happy to wear the shorts or not. And we were happy to wear the shorts.
"The weekend that Dublin and Kilkenny were playing, we were playing Wexford in the other semi-final.
"We were happy to wear shorts that day in protest as well.
"We were told Wexford were happy to wear the skorts, so we just felt we were in a bit of a hard place, whether if we turned up in shorts, would the match be given against us.
"So we just felt as a panel that we were after training so hard for it that we wouldn't (wear shorts) that day. Obviously, if we had won that day, we would have been very happy to wear them (shorts) in the Leinster final.
"So, I suppose we were stuck a little bit. with what we felt was going on in a different camp.
"That's nothing against Wexford or anything like that. That's their choice.
"We just felt at that point nothing had happened elsewhere, so we didn't know what way the thing was going to go. We were afraid if we turned up wearing shorts in the warm up, the referee would just turn around and be like we're given the match to the other team.
"Going forward, if it is a thing, we'd be very, very happy to, to wear the shorts as a panel."
While the focus on the skorts issue has turbo-charged the push for change, Teehan says the controversy has somewhat overshadowed the preparation for the All-Ireland championship, which commences later this month.
"It's great to get the attention on this issue because it has been an issue for players for quite a while.
"It does take away from your preparation. I know as someone who's going to be texting into the player's group to tell them that this is what's going on, you don't like doing that, to be pulling and dragging girls the night before a game.
"It is affecting girls' thoughts around preparation, particularly this week and last week.
"Championship is starting on 24 May and we should be talking about the great matches and hopefully the great championship that we will have but it is overshadowed by this."
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