Exporting excellence becomes name of the game
ALETTER-WRITER to a national newspaper the other day addressed the excitement around Reeling In The Years. The bizarre frenzy around a nostalgia show is explained in part by the general absence of reasons to be cheerful over the past year.
However, one viewer noted an interesting absence in the section of last week’s programme dealing with sport. ‘I did think that by 2010,’ they wrote, of the featured year in the first programme of the new series, ‘or indeed 2021 when this (programme) was aired, it might have been noticed that not only men play Gaelic games.’
It was an interesting point, and at the very least it showed the heightened awareness around women’s sport. The 2010 women’s football final was one of the most significant in recent times, too.
Tyrone had shocked Cork in the quarter-finals, and the county reached their first final.
There, they were well beaten by Dublin, winning their first All-Ireland after losing finals in 2003, 2004, and 2009.
The victorious side included Lindsay Peat, Lyndsey Davey and Sinead Aherne, and a crowd of 21, 750 was in attendance.
It was one of the more significant sports events of 2010, particularly given what unfolded thereafter, with Cork’s rebound and Dublin’s rise helping to drive the popularity of women’s football to the point that it is regularly celebrated now as the fastest-growing sport in Ireland.
The influence of Ireland’s leading female footballers has continued through the winter, too, thanks to the AFLW, better known as women’s Aussie Rules, and the clever coverage of TG4.
No broadcaster has done more for women’s sports coverage in this country in recent times than the Irish-language station, and its decision to broadcast deferred match coverage every weekend, as well as a weekly highlights show, was typically inspired.
The season reached its conclusion in the early hours of this morning with the final between the Adelaide Crows and the Brisbane Lions. It started at 5am Irish-time, and there was expected to be at least one prominent Irish figure involved.
Orla O’Dwyer of Tipperary has been excellent for Brisbane since the start of the season, which began at the end of January.
Clare’s Ailish Considine plays with the Crows, but did not feature in last weekend’s preliminary final (better known in these parts as a semi-final). She was listed as an emergency reserve, but Considine is a proven winner in the AFLW, having triumphed with the Crows in the 2019 Grand final, in which she was a goal-scorer.
There was a crowd of 53,000 in attendance that day, while the numbers for this morning’s decider will be under scrutiny, too.
This was the first season in which supporters were charged for entry to games. This is the fifth season of the AFLW and for the first four, most matches were free to attend and the few that did charge for entry only did so for a nominal amount.
This season, all tickets cost $10 and this was in part to do with the sport’s response to the pandemic, as all-ticket games are easier to plan and police.
This morning’s grand final was played in Adelaide, with Considine’s Crows rewarded for finishing the regular season as the top-ranked side by having the final played in their home state.
Two Irish players in the highlight of the Aussie Rules season only partly attests to the Irish influence on the sport – and that influence is, itself, a sign of the enormous strides made in the women’s game here, especially over the past decade. Whereas the threat of Australian poachers triggered for a while a faintly hysterical reaction in the men’s game – the Australian danger was presented in some quarters as an existential one, despite the absence of any convincing evidence – the attention of AFLW clubs validates the improvements in all aspects of women’s football here. A day could come when the attentions of the Aussie Rules clubs becomes unwelcome, and that could be merely another indicator of the increasing domestic standard. However, there are important differences between the men’s and women’s versions of Aussie Rules that make this unlikely. The most important of them is that whereas the men’s game is professional – it is the most popular sport in a country that does sport better than just about any other on earth – the women’s remains semi-professional. That has its own attractions for Irish players, though, in that they can commit to it for five to six months, and in that time complete preseason and a full playing season. It obviously involves sacrifices at home, a co-operative employer or perhaps a career break, but clearly players can make it happen.
Cora Staunton was last week voted on to the team of the season, this truly remarkable star finishing her term with New South Wales Giants with 10 goals.
Staunton is 39 now, and she revealed in these pages at the start of this year’s Aussie Rules season that when she does eventually return to Ireland, finding a job will be a priority as she left her previous one.
And she has recently stressed that there will be no Mayo return, either. Staunton left the Mayo squad with a number of her Carnacon club team-mates in 2018 following a dispute with then-manager Peter Leahy.
Michael Moyles is the new manager of the county and he is determined to start afresh. The county’s most famous women’s player will not be a part of the plan.
‘I have no ambition to play,’ she said. ‘My days with Mayo are certainly done.’
She was circumspect in a recent interview with her club’s media department about her future, saying it’s ‘reflection-time for me’.
Staunton did suggest, though, that her Giants team-mate Bríd Stack will be keen to return next season, having missed the entire season to the serious neck injury she sustained in her first warm-up game.
The furore surrounding that incident was a reminder of how tough this sport can be – and how hard the players have to be to endure it.
Staunton, for instance, broke her leg in two places two years ago. She was 37 when it happened, but battled back and finished this season as her club’s top scorers.
It seems safe to assume that, fitness-permitting, the Giants will welcome her back next term.
By then, vaccines should obviate the need for the gruelling quarantines Irish players had to endure ahead of this season.
Fourteen Irish players signed up for the 2021 season, down from 18 the year before, and the representation will be in the high teens again next year, at the very least.
It could well be higher if travel restrictions relax to the extent anticipated, and potential recruits unconvinced by the attractions of two weeks in a hotel room before the season begins, are more enthusiastic (Staunton left quarantine on Christmas Day, then spent the day travelling hours to meet up with the rest of the squad).
The Irish impact on this campaign was significant, led by a veteran but sustained by younger talents, too.
‘This is the first season fans had to pay to get in’