Resolution of skorts saga allows camogie action on the pitch to take centre stage as Clare vs Wexford among best games
With that
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Saoirse McCarthy of Cork is tackled by Clare Hehir of Clare during last month's Munster Championship semi-final
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Dublin captain Aisling Maher has been one of the most prominent voices in the movement that yesterday culminated in players being given the freedom to wear either shorts or skorts
GLEN DIMPLEX ALL-IRELAND SENIOR CHAMPIONSIP GROUP 1
Clare v Wexford, Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosog, 2pm
Referee: Andy Larkin (Cork)
(Live on Camogie Association YouTube)
There is no time for these teams to feel their way into the championship as in a group that includes Cork, Tipperary and Limerick, this looks like being a crucial fixture with regard to determining one of the three qualification berths to the knockout stages.
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There has rarely been much between the teams and in the league, a couple of goals gave the Banner a one-point victory in Enniscorthy.
That got them to the Division 1B final which they lost to Antrim, after a very competitive hour.
Wexford actually scored more and conceded less than Clare through the group stages of the league.
They also reached the Leinster final last weekend, where Kilkenny were too strong, and must put that to bed quickly. This is an impossible game to call.
Most read in GAA Hurling
Cork v Limerick, Páirc Uí Rinn, 4pm
Referee: Joe Mullins (Clare)
Limerick GAA fans troll RTE pundit Donal Og Cusack after win over Cork
Limerick have shown improved form this year, achieving mid-table status in the second tier of the league with wins over Westmeath and Down.
They were unable to overcome Wexford and Clare, who they will renew rivalries with in the coming weeks.
Cork, as Division 1A champions and the team now attempting to secure a championship three-in-a-row, are camogie's standard bearers.
Anything other than a home victory would be a huge surprise.
GLEN DIMPLEX ALL-IRELAND SENIOR CHAMPIONSIP GROUP 2
Derry v Kilkenny, Owenbeg, 2pm
Referee: Brian Kearney (Kildare)
Derry secured their senior status quite comfortably 12 months ago and that will be their target once again in 2025.
They will need to defend better than in the Division 2 league final, when they conceded four goals and could have shipped more.
They were missing half last year's team, however, and some of those will return against the Cats.
Starting at home is a boost against a Kilkenny side making gradual improvements under new manager Tommy Shefflin.
The Stripeywomen were easy winners of the Leinster final last weekend against Wexford and will be hotly fancied to make the long trek back home with the three points tucked under their belts.
Galway v Dublin, Kenny Park, 4pm
Referee: Liz Dempsey (Kilkenny)
This is an intriguing affair as Dublin have consistently pushed Galway to the wire in recent seasons.
There was six points between them in Kilbeacanty last March but after starting with a draw against Tipperary, the Dubs failed to secure another positive result and were relegated from Division 1A of the League.
Galway beat Cork in the final group game to book their place in the decider but never showed up, with the Rebels exacting swift and severe retribution with the silverware on the line.
The lack of provincial games for the westerners has often led to a slow championship start for the Tribeswomen so Dublin will look to rattle them early but last year's All-Ireland finalists will be favoured to prevail.
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RTÉ News
28 minutes ago
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Cork's left-wing policy proving fruitful in three-in-a-row bid
Saoirse McCarthy and Laura Hayes directly scored or assisted half of Cork's semi-final total to reach this afternoon's All-Ireland senior camogie decider. Cork's left wing is the most feared in the country with both players set to play a huge role as their team bid for a first three-in-a-row since 1972. Hayes at left half-back, and McCarthy, ahead of her at left half-forward, shared 62 involvements over the 60 minutes of Cork's 1-21 to 1-11 win over Waterford two weeks ago. They were involved in most of the good things their team did - scoring, creating, breaking lines, carrying hard into space, passing long and short, battling for possession and tackling back. Inspiring all around them from the left flank, even as Cork struggled in the first half, they alone scored or assisted 0-07 of 0-09. Over the entire contest, they accounted for 0-12 in scores and direct assists - scoring eight points between them and with four more assisted - as well as one of them having an involvement in a further four points. In total, the left-wing duo were involved in 24 scoring chances as their team reached a fifth consecutive All-Ireland final.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘It's so brilliant to see them hopping off each other': How camogie moved the goalposts
After the 2018 All-Ireland final, camogie had reached a crisis point and a tipping point. For the second year in a row the two outstanding teams in the championship had produced an insufferable spectacle, polluted with fouls and frees and flooded defences. Until then, only two finals in history had failed to produce a goal but Cork and Kilkenny had managed it in successive years. It wouldn't have come as a surprise to either of them because that was how they had set up: any other outcome would have been a systems failure. Cork and Kilkenny had goaded each other into a siege mentality. The referee, though, shouldered a disproportionate share of the blame. Thirty-six frees had been awarded. Only 27 points were scored and just nine had come from play. For scrupulously applying the rules, Eamon Cassidy was vilified. 'I met John Power from Callan after it [the former Kilkenny hurler] and he said he was never going to another camogie match,' says Ann Downey, who managed Kilkenny in those finals and won 12 All-Irelands in a Hall of Fame career. READ MORE 'He said he couldn't stick it. There were an awful lot of people not happy with the whole stop-start nature of it. The rules had to change – particularly after that game.' [ From the archive: Glory days of blazing camogie finals well and truly over Opens in new window ] Camogie's past and whatever camogie's future might look like had reached an impasse. The game had evolved beyond the competence of its rule book. Strength and conditioning programmes had become the norm for all serious teams and yet camogie's rules were hostile to physical contact. It was wedded to the charade that physical contact could be filtered in some way or diluted. 'The camogie rules had never made any sense, in any era, in any context,' says Eimear Ryan, award-winning author of The Grass Ceiling and former Tipperary player. 'You're trying to put shackles on a game that is by nature physical and free-flowing. I think it was just this well-intentioned, but kind of patronising, idea in the first place to come up with compromise camogie rules. I'm so glad in this more progressive age that they've essentially just made it the same as hurling.' [ Eimear Ryan: 'I thought that there was some trick to writing a novel' Opens in new window ] Camogie has a reputation for being conservative and institutionally opposed to change. In the flare-up over the introduction of shorts earlier this year, the association's leadership, at all levels, was excoriated for being out of touch with its players. In that case, they eventually bowed to irresistible pressure. Kilkenny's Shelly Farrell and Cork's Ashling Thompson in the 2018 All-Ireland final. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho But of the four principal games in the Gaelic games family none has changed more profoundly than camogie since the turn of the century. Men's football has just emerged from open-heart surgery, women's football probably needs to see a consultant, hurling has undergone a series of strategic upheavals, but camogie has turned somersaults. Some of that change was open-eyed and deliberate, some of it was environmental. When camogie made the life-changing decision to switch to 15-a-side in 1999 the game was exposed to new horizons and different thinking. It wasn't a blank page, but there were just a few scribbles. 'When camogie was 12-a-side, if you had three or four good players they could dominate the game, but with 15-a-side, a team had to be more balanced,' says Kate Kelly, who won four All-Irelands and nine All Stars in a Wexford career that spanned 20 years. Ann Downey: 'When we were playing, a lot of the players just went out and trained … Now they're all in the gym.' Photograph: Tommy Dickson/Inpho 'It hugely improved the game. It's enhanced it in every way – tactically, and even from a perception point of view. You know, it was a full-sized pitch, you weren't using two small goals, that, realistically, only under-12s were using. It's hard to fathom now that we played 12-a-side.' What it added to the game immediately was a greater premium on athleticism. Once camogie embraced that new imperative the ceiling kept rising. How fast? How strong? 'When we were playing,' says Downey, 'a lot of the players just went out and trained. Angela [Ann's sister] and myself did a good bit in the gym all right, but I couldn't say there were another two or three on the Kilkenny panel that were doing the same. Now they're all in the gym.' Different strands coalesced. When the game was 12-a-side, the ball moved more freely, and often on the ground. But on a bigger pitch, and with fitter players, carrying the ball gained more currency. The game had a different beat: it had made the evolutionary jump from Ska to Mod. 'I don't know whether I should say it got more professional or it got more serious,' says Kelly, 'but in terms of culture, players became more conscious of all the elements that improved their game.' Saoirse McCarthy of Cork during last month's All-Ireland semi-final against Waterford at Nowlan Park. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho When camogie went 15-a-side, it also reduced the tariff on imports from hurling. Ideas were traded through a frictionless border. 'The game became a lot more tactical,' says Ryan. 'Everything that has happened in hurling over the last 20 years has just seamlessly transitioned over to camogie because camogie teams are generally coached by recently retired hurlers.' Historically, camogie had resisted being categorised as a female version of hurling. It had a distinctive culture and identity and didn't need to be cross-referenced with its sibling. For a long time, it was much easier to hold that line. On the Camogie Association website about 10 years ago they listed all the differences between both games; the counting stopped at 41. Some of the differences were administrative or technical, but some of them were fundamental to how the games were played. The All-Ireland semi-finals in Nowlan Park last month were perfect illustrations of the modern game: accomplished and tactical and exceptionally physical 'The impression I would have is that most players conflate camogie and hurling as the same thing,' says Ryan. 'They don't see camogie as a distinct, separate sport. 'You go on a kind of a journey as a player. I remember as a kid being almost, like, offended by the rules. You could catch it three times in possession in camogie – that was another rule difference – and you could drop the hurley. I thought these were awful rules and I refused to use them as a young player. What emerged from the rubble of the 2017 and 2018 All-Ireland finals was an appetite for rule change. Photograph: Donall Farmer/Inpho 'And then in my 20s, when I was playing in the inside forward line, I actually realised it was very handy to drop the hurl and handpass a goal and I did that a lot.' Handpassing a goal is no longer allowed in camogie. Neither is catching the ball three times or dropping the hurley. What emerged from the rubble of the 2017 and 2018 All-Ireland finals was an appetite for rule change. The players were up in arms about how contact was governed. The impetus for reform came from them. The Camogie Association rowed with the tide. At the beginning of 2019 the Women's Gaelic Players' Association assembled a group of its members to assess what needed to be addressed and later that year the Camogie Association staged a 'feedback forum' in Croke Park. 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Galway's Sarah Healy is tackled by Jean Kelly and Karen Kennedy of Tipperary in July's semi-final. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho Camogie, though, still balked at a full-on shoulder charge. Instead, it came up with a fudge: a side-on tackle, 'with minimal force once [the player] is making a reasonable effort to gain possession. Contact must not be made in an aggressive or cynical manner'. In reality, though, this gave referees more latitude to tolerate harder tackling and it gave players more licence. In a see-saw graph, free counts dropped as contests for the ball became more intense. There are still some squeamish referees on the circuit, or those who are more committed to old customs and practices. But matches between elite teams are no longer strangled by a referee's whistle. The All-Ireland semi-finals in Nowlan Park last month were perfect illustrations of the modern game: accomplished and tactical and exceptionally physical. 'The rule changes have been huge and so refreshing to see,' says Ryan. 'The girls nowadays are so strong – you can see it in them. They're S&Ced to within an inch of their lives. It's so brilliant to see them hopping off each other.' How much has the game changed? When Downey started playing for Kilkenny in the 1970s, there were two crossbars in camogie – one conventional crossbar and another at the top of the uprights. To score a point, the ball had to pass between both crossbars. The second crossbar survived until 1979. Just 20 years later they moved the goalposts again. And you thought camogie had no mind for change.
Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Irish Examiner
Hannah Looney: Easier be the hunter than the hunted
Cork's three-in-a-row bid is well-documented. It's been many years since it was achieved. In fact, over a half century. Hannah Looney joined the Rebel senior set-up as a young 17-year-old in 2014 and while six All-Ireland senior camogie medals is quite the haul, including back-to-back victories thrice, the quest of putting three All-Ireland wins together hasn't been realised. Similar to a number of her county teammates, the Killeagh club player would love to rectify that stat. The hugely successful dual star salutes those women of the early '70s that won four simultaneously, recognising their hard work and dedication. Actually, there is a strong connection throughout the four squads to east Cork and indeed to her own club, with names such as Marie Costine, Pat Moloney and Marion Sweeney just a few who played their part. 'I must look them up and find some of those ladies, it is on my to-do list,' she said at last week's media event. 'It's a long time since it was done alright. 'It is an opportunity for this team to leave a mark but for now, it is just another game and we won't be thinking about that on Sunday. It's a huge job to do and I don't really get sidetracked about it. We cannot look too far ahead. 'For me personally, the success Cork women have had in football and camogie over the years is just phenomenal.' Trying to hold on to the O'Duffy Cup is never easy. The hunter becomes the hunted. 'From experience, it is a lot easier when you are the one chasing, when you are the wolf climbing the hill, it is a lot, lot easier. 'I'm sure Galway will have that plastered on their dressing-room, us going for three-in-a-row and how they are going to stop it.' Wexford are the most recent county to claim three successive titles (2010-2012). Since then, Cork has come closest, winning two on the bounce a couple of times. 'I do think it is a lot harder to stay at the top,' she stated. 'If this Cork team does get over the line, it will tell a lot about us as a group. 'It's the third time in my career going for three-in-a-row. We won in '14 and '15 and we were stopped in '16 by Kilkenny. And then in '17 and '18 we won and Galway beat us in the semi-final in '19.'
