Cooney always determined to fight her corner
Galway star reflects on momentous week
IN a momentous week, Heather Cooney is likely to have taken her greatest pleasure from getting back on the field yesterday afternoon.
This is her 12th season as a Galway senior but yesterday’s opening round Littlewoods Camogie league clash against Clare was approached with as much enthusiasm by the St Thomas’s veteran as if it was her first.
That is in part down to one of the legacies of lockdown, a greater appreciation for small freedoms, but spirits have also been lifted by the fact that the voice of female GAA players is finally being heard in the corridors of power.
Inside 48 hours this week, the ground finally shifted beneath their feet with two seismic decisions that were long overdue.
On Monday, Minister of State for Sport Jack Chambers finally confirmed that female inter-county players would achieve equity through State funding with their male counterparts. Even more dramatically, the Camogie Association did a U-turn, after consultation with their entire membership, to get in line with the GAA and LGFA, and opted for a split-season model.
If the move on the Government funding was the response to intensive lobbying, the Camogie Association was forced to blink primarily by the defiance of its elite players with 82 per cent of them indicating through the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) that they wanted a split season.
The Camogie Association had proposed that club action would be sandwiched between the intercounty league and championship but the wider membership rejected the plan, which was just as well as
Cork had indicated they were considering a boycott of the league if there was no shift.
Cooney is in the sport to play it rather than to picket it, but her relief this week was palpable as was her pride that the players, as a collective, had been heard.
‘The big thing was that despite the rivalry there is between the counties, that we stayed together and the GPA were with us. We came together because it was something we believed in. It was clear really when there was an 82 per cent vote from inter-county players for the split season so I was surprised at the beginning but they (Camogie Association) had their thoughts on it.
‘I am just glad it has been resolved because it was a distraction we did not really want prior to the start of the league campaign.’
The equality in funding was as much about respect as the money.
‘Absolutely, it is really important we get the same public funding as the men. We are putting in the same amount of effort. Our sport is still growing in the media but in relation to public funding I can’t see why we would not get equal funding.
‘I think it is great, it is important that we are seen to have levelled the playing field for females.
‘It just seemed bizarre to me. We were putting our best efforts into what we were doing. I always thought it funny that we would be seen as different from a public funding perspective so I think it is brilliant what the GPA has been doing on that front for us,’ added the two-time All-Star.
But the funding will also have a real impact on the lives of the players who have had to invest more than just time and effort to play for their counties.
‘If I totted up the amount of diesel I put into the car down the years to go to training, it would be something. I could not even tell you how much money I put into my car but, look, that was never going to stop us going to training.
‘I am lucky in that I am working and I am putting my own money into my car and I don’t have to worry about where I am getting it.
‘But when you are in college you are just putting your pennies together because you simply don’t have the disposable income to be travelling here, there and everywhere.’
With momentum at their back, the next step for women in Gaelic games may be to come together as one within the GAA.
‘I can only see benefits from all of us being under the one umbrella. I think there is great strength in numbers whereas when you are in different associations it becomes that much more difficult to fight your corner,’ added Cooney
‘MONEY WAS NEVER GOING TO STOP ME GOING TO TRAINING’