One step forward, but two steps back
IN A recent column I highlighted the need for greater investment and focus on women’s sport in this lovely little country of ours, and the attendance at Sunday’s ladies’ football showdown between Dublin and Mayo proved that the appetite is certainly there for it, if it’s marketed in the right way.
The crowd of 46,286 that piled into Croke Park was the biggest at any women’s sport event in Europe this year.
The attendance dwarfed the 17,115 that watched the Rugby World Cup final, the 22,433 that paid in to the Champions League decider, the 28,182 at the Women’s Euros final, and even the 35,271 that sat in the stands for the English FA Cup showpiece.
To outdo major international sporting events such as those mentioned is no mean feat, and those who worked hard in the background to promote Sunday’s game deserve a huge pat on the back for their efforts.
With no sign of Cork, who have been strutting their stuff on All-Ireland day for more than a decade and winning all before them without any calls to split the county in two, it was left to Dublin and Mayo to provide the entertainment in the main event at Croke Park.
Gaelic games are on such a high in the capital at the moment and after the dominance showed by Dublin on Sunday they could replicate their male counterparts, and maybe, just maybe, the previously unflappable Cork, might have to spend a little bit of time in the wilderness.
Of course it would be folly to get carried away over one match and the real challenge is to try to maintain attendance figures, but if Dublin continue to be a mainstay on the big day in September, surely the only way is up for the sport.
It’s not just about the bums on seats, it’s what the increased crowds will generate in terms of media coverage, and most importantly, sponsorship that will help the sport to flourish and grow.
My own seven-year-old daughter loves nothing more that heading off to Gaelic football training, and I’d like to think that if she sticks with it she’ll be afforded the same opportunities that my young lad, and thousands more like him, will have.
As kids full of wide-eyed excitement they play Gaelic football, hurling, soccer, or whatever takes their fancy purely for the love of the game, and while I like to offer encouragement from the sideline, I’ll never be one of those pushy parents putting any pressure on my offspring to perform. As long as they enjoy it and are given an equal chance to shine, it’s all good with me.
Unfortunately for women’s sport as a whole, it was a case of one step forward and two steps back on Sunday, as just down the road from GAA headquarters the scheduled UCD Waves versus Kilkenny United National League game at Jackson Park failed to kick-off as match officials weren’t in attendance.
After a fruitless 20-minute wait the teams played a practice match instead, a farcical situation which just shouldn’t happen at the top level of the domestic game, with the sorry incident ironically hap- pening on the same weekend as the first-ever FAI Women’s Football Convention, which supposedly had changing the image of the game at its core.
It’s a shame, after all the positivity surrounding the attendance at Croke Park on Sunday, and the quality and supreme fitness levels on show, that women’s sport was brought back to earth with a thunderous bang, due to the fiasco in our national soccer league.
It’s always nice to focus on the positives, but like an annoying horsefly that bites on your milky white legs on the first warm day of the summer, it’s a crying shame that the situation reared its ugly head to severely lessen the party mood.
Thankfully that damned horsefly can be swatted away, but unless the problems that run deep through the women’s game are seriously addressed, they will continue to nibble away like a blood-thirsty insect.