Former Cork captain Cathriona Foley on what can be done to further grow camogie

There's a very strong connection between UCC and Cork camogie.

When Cork landed a double at Croke Park last Sunday, 15 of the senior panel are current or past UCC students, along with 12 of the intermediate squad. 

That includes captain Molly Lynch, who recently retained her Poc Fada crown as well, and marquee forward Amy O'Connor.

Dr Cathriona Foley, a lecturer in the Department of Surgery, was a four-time All-Ireland winner for the Rebels, captaining the side in 2008, as well as collecting three ladies football All-Irelands and three camogie All-Stars. 

The Rockbán club woman said the link between the College and Cork camogie can be traced through the history of the sport.

"Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (Tórna), a Professor of Irish and Dean of the Faculty of Celtic Studies in UCC and his sister Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha, from Carraig na bhFear, along with Máire Ní Chinnéide from Dublin are credited with creating the sport of camogie in 1903. Tadhg Ó Donnchadha was involved in drawing up the first set of rules for camogie and he is credited with inventing the name of the sport, which came from the shorter stick that women played with a camóg and resulted in the name camógaíocht." 

When the camogie association was established in 1904 it was decided to anglicise the Irish name camógaíocht to camogie. Camogie was introduced to UCC in 1913 by Margaret McKenna and Hannah O'Donovan and, along with UCD, was one of only two intervarsity camogie teams in Ireland at the time. 

"Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha, sister of Tadhg, sought the assistance of Agnes O’Farrelly, a Professor of Irish in UCD, to establish an intervarsity competition in 1914. The competition was named the Ashbourne Cup after Lord Ashbourne who donated the cup to the competition at the request of Agnes O’Farrelly."

Having shone for the Rebels in the noughties, Foley is delighted to see the profile of camogie and ladies football rise in recent years, though accepts they are still playing catch-up to hurling and football in terms of coverage. Cork have lifted Liam McCarthy twice and Sam Maguire once since 2002 but the women's teams have managed a staggered 11 All-Ireland victories in each code in that period.

"It's an incredible achievement and should be given more recognition. In those 22 years, there have been improvements in terms of access to watching live games online or on mainstream TV but there is always room for improvement and increasing this capacity. 

There are more male GAA games on live TV and there needs to be more equity here. Young females need and benefit just as much from seeing what represents them on TV, in the media, in their community 'If you can see it, you can be it'.

"In UCC the demand from female students to play last year surpassed what the university could facilitate. At a local level, camogie and ladies football needs to be supported by the provision of more teams, to do this they need additional funding, access to more facilities and more volunteers to get involved with more teams."

BOOM

Crowds have grown, 27,811 on Jones Road last weekend, after 30,340 attended the ladies football. 

"The first All-Ireland I attended was in 1998 when Irene O'Keeffe scored two cracking goals in the first half for Cork which sealed the deal for the Rebels retained the O'Duffy Cup under the leadership of Bishopstown's Ethne Duggan to the dismay of Galway. At that game there were about 10,400 or so in attendance, by the time I had the chance to play in Croke Park in 2003 there were around 16,000 in attendance.

What does seem to make a big difference to attendances at inter-county camogie and ladies football games are the bus-loads of underage teams that make the trip. 

"This is only made possible by all the wonderful volunteers in those counties, clubs and schools.

"Wouldn't it be fantastic if more GAA clubs started bringing bus-loads of underage male teams to support the camogie and ladies football inter-county teams?"