Improving their lot by doing it for themselves
THE Twitter account of the Armagh ladies Gaelic footballers offered congratulations to Waterford on their news this week – and a gentle clarification, too. Another tweeter had suggested that Waterford were the first county in the code to own their own ground, following the news of their planned development near Dungarvan. Armagh beat them to it. Their new facility, McKeever Park, is in the south of the county and it was ready for action last spring, but of course the effects of the pandemic meant players had to wait until later in the year before they could start using it.
The project is not yet complete, with a vigorous fundraising campaign to pay for floodlights the latest stage in what has been a long and admirable effort.
Their congratulatory message to Waterford was also a reminder that they were the first ladies football county to build their own pitch. Cork, meanwhile, have had their own camogie facility since 2012.
But who came first is incidental to the bigger detail: counties in women’s Gaelic games deciding the only way to improve their lot is by doing it themselves.
The details of the Waterford development bear noting. On Monday the county’s Ladies Gaelic Football Association announced plans to develop their own grounds after the purchase of an 11-acre site. It adjoins part of the Waterford Greenway and the board plan to commence work on it by summer.
This, one supposes, is contingent on
It’s not always a happy extended family
public health measures, but delays counting in weeks or even months is as nothing compared to the years gone into providing for their own home.
The development will include a pitch, stand, changing rooms, parking facilities and a six-lane running track. Crucially, it will also be available to all club and county women’s football sides in Waterford.
The target is to have the pitch open and in use by the spring of 2023.
This story, like the initiative shown in Armagh, are in themselves tributes to the determination of people who are simply passionate about their sport and the effect it can have on many lives. But the stories are also reflective of the reality in which women’s GAA teams try to play their games.
They do not own their grounds or playing fields, and are reliant on co-operation from GAA clubs and counties for the use of venues.
One of the more surprising aspects of the controversy that blew up around the Cork-Galway football semifinal last month was the widespread ignorance among the public about the relationship between the Ladies Gaelic Football and Camogie Associations, and the GAA.
This is not all one close family — and, as that disastrous episode illustrated, it’s not always a happy extended one, either.
The practical effects of this are experienced by players at all levels of women’s Gaelic games, year after year. This was alluded to as part of the Waterford story in recent days.
‘It was day to day, week to week, they were traversing the county,’ Edel Curry of the Waterford ladies board said.
Now, they may only be a couple of years away from ending their reliance on others.
Relations are often excellent between the women’s and men’s games, but because they don’t own the grounds, the women’s teams invariably lose out when there is, for instance, a scheduling conflict (and anecdotal evidence suggests accommodations are often more difficult to find at club than county level).
This, remember, was one of the early contributors to the semifinal mess.
The match had been fixed for the Gaelic Grounds, but as a result of the Limerick hurlers reaching the All-Ireland final, they needed use of the pitch on the day of the semi-final to prepare for the hurling final.
Despite some of the ill-informed fury directed at the organisers of the Cork-Galway game, there was nothing they could do about this particular aspect of it.
The Gaelic Grounds was made available to the LGFA on the proviso that were Limerick to reach the hurling final, the needs of that team would be accommodated first.
And this was once again a consequence of the fact that ladies Gaelic games are played at a remove from the GAA itself. The rights and wrongs of a full unification between the three organisations, with the LGFA and Camogie Association absorbed into the GAA, have been raised (if not exhaustively debated) since the events of December.
Whatever one’s stance, it is a simple fact that a body that depends on another for the use of its grounds is vulnerable to the kind of incident that marred one of the biggest games of the women’s football year.
No wonder counties like Waterford and Armagh have sought to take matters under their own control.
Sinéad Reel, the chair of the Armagh LGFA, spoke to The Belfast Telegraph last May on the background to the purchase of their own pitch.
Unsurprisingly, the uncertainty around venues was a prime motivation.
‘We would always have found it hard to get pitches, so that’s really what led us to deciding we really had to go for this and build our own,’ she said.
‘We were paying money out for pitch hire, didn’t have anything for ourselves and a club could turn around and push you off a pitch you had booked (for) that night, at lunchtime.
‘And that’s only one example of what could happen at clubs. They could always say at the last minute that they couldn’t accommodate us.
‘These are senior inter-county players leaving work in Cavan and not knowing where training was going to be at 6pm.’
In that same interview, Reel reflected on the news from 2019 that the Armagh GAA board had ambitious plans to redevelop the grounds of the St Malachy’s club in Portadown. The ladies board had not been contacted about the plans, either for their view or with an offer to use them when developed.
That is not an exceptional example of the relationship between the men’s and women’s games.
Going their own way might show the determination in counties, but fundraising is a grind. However, the fact that the money is being raised is an indicator of the support for what is the fastest growing sport in the country.
The LGFA are supportive of projects such as these, and even in the event of the GAA becoming the governor of all Gaelic games, male and female, on the island (this is not a prospect that will figure in the short-term), the facilities are unlikely to go to waste.
There are enough men’s teams, after all – some of them intercounty, often in whatever has the misfortune to be the secondary code in a particular county – that struggle to find venues, too.
The viability of other counties following Waterford’s lead depends on a number of factors, including the price of land in their region. But one complicating factor could also be the economic downturn threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Uncertainty is not easily dispelled.
Ladies games are played at a remove from the GAA