26-05-2025
Netball's dress debate mirrored in Ireland's camogie skort fight
The protest from Ireland's camogie players refusing to wear "uncomfortable" uniforms that conformed to tradition mirrors the discussion about whether netballers in Australia should still be mandated to wear dresses.
After years of discontent and backlash from players, the Camogie's ruling body last Thursday ended the obligation to wear skorts (a skirt with built-in shorts underneath), which critics said had deterred girls from taking up the sport.
The Camogie Association made the change after Dublin and Kilkenny players turned up at their provincial Leinster semifinal in shorts.
After the referee threatened to abandon the game, the players changed into skorts. However, the protest galvanised public solidarity with their cause.
This echoes a discussion point in recent years around the netball dress here in Australia, as some leaders have been calling for change, citing the uniform as uncomfortable and restrictive.
Bess Schnioffsky, a researcher at RMIT University, whose thesis looks at femininity in Australia netball, said the tight-fitting, very short nature of the netball dress often left players pulling down their uniform.
"A lot of netball moves involving putting your hands over your head, so if you're constantly worrying about pulling down your dress then you're not playing the game to the fullest of your ability," Dr Schnioffsky said.
Dr Schnioffsky said there's an interesting tension at the moment in netball at the higher levels, with some players loving the traditional dress and others finding it outdated.
"(Some) players are like 'Why are we still playing in a dress in 2025, this makes no sense' and other players are like 'No, I love playing in a dress, it's part of the game and I love that I can be feminine and sporty'," Dr Schnioffsky said.
When the option was given at the Team Girls Cup, the sport's official pre-season tournament, most players still opted for the dress despite some choosing a shorts or leggings and singlet combination.
GWS co-captain Jo Harten told ABC Sport last year that behind the scenes, she's been pushing for a more inclusive uniform policy at club level.
"I think, the broader options we can have as a uniform, the more people it will attract, because it doesn't have to be one body type playing this sport," Harten, who has played netball at the top level for close to 20 years, said.
"We should be looking at people of all different sizes, ethnicities, styles of hair, because essentially, that is what makes a global game and the more we can be inclusive, the better."
A state of the game review in 2020 found that a lack of flexibility in uniforms was proving to be a barrier to girls taking up the sport.
A 2021 national study by Victoria University found 58 per cent of girls do not want to wear skirts while playing sport outside of school, and 65 per cent do not want to wear skirts during school sport.
Following this, Netball Australia revealed changes to their uniform policy in late 2022, which would allow players and umpires to choose between a dress, singlet, bodysuit, short-sleeved or long-sleeved shirt, skirt, shorts and long pants.
These changes were implemented for the first time during the Super Netball pre-season Team Girls Cup by three teams.
However, once the main season commenced, all teams returned to the netball dress.
The discussion around netball uniforms has been simmering for years.
Former Diamonds world champion Ash Brazill, in 2023, said that when she started playing netball, she didn't know where she belonged, partly because of the attire.
"You know, I didn't have the blonde ponytail with the ribbon in their hair and I would have preferred to wear shorts than a dress," Brazill told The Age in 2023.
"And going into footy and hearing [people] asking girls 'why did they stop playing netball', and a lot of it was not feeling like they belonged."
Similarly, Dr Schnioffsky said if she was choosing a sport to play as a girl today, she'd likely opt for football over netball, given the comfort of the kit.
"That was the part of the game that I really had to grapple with, how I felt in a dress," Schnioffsky said.
"Because I didn't like it and I was very conscious of how my body looked in the dress and how I was being perceived in the dress. Whereas if I was growing up now I think I would have played footy.
"Because even though the uniform is still somewhat restrictive in terms of the short shorts, there's a greater diversity of bodies at that higher level who are modelling how it looks to fit in a footy jumper versus how, if you look at the elite professional netball bodies, that diversity isn't there."
