Time to ‘stop knocking’ female sports stars, says Cork keeper Aoife Murray

Six-time All-Ireland winning Cork camogie goalkeeper Aoife Murray has expressed frustration at how female sports, and its participants, are treated in Ireland.

Speaking at a discussion forum on women, sport and leadership at UCC, Murray said attitudes towards those playing camogie and ladies football must change, especially amongst female fans.

“We need to step up and stop knocking the woman who is succeeding and instead follow the path that she has laid. We need to congratulate her and promote her.”

Murray was responding on Monday night to the comments of Cork ladies football manager Eamonn Ryan who said that “the biggest problem is ladies don’t support ladies’ sports.” He continued: “On your average day, I would get more compliments about the Cork ladies team from men than I would from women.”

The six-time All-Star goalkeeper also cites the separate organisations overseeing camogie and ladies football as a major stumbling block to growing public interest in both games.

“It is very hard to promote female sports when you have two organisations. It is hard to promote it when there are three organisations; the GAA, the LGFA and the Camogie Association. I am not a member of the GAA.

“We need to bring that together. There are so many issues that need to be addressed. At the moment I don’t think our game is at the level where it should be in both refereeing and umpiring. When there is less than 30 frees in the game, it is pretty good.

“We need to bring that down so to make it more entertaining for people to attend.” She believes that many women don’t consider it ‘cool’ to go to camogie matches.

Between the sticks for the Cork camogie team since 2004, Murray has played in nine All-Ireland finals and rarely has the attendance on September’s third Sunday climbed above 20,000. A crowd of 16,610 watched Cork secure back-to-back All-Ireland camogie titles, almost half the attendance of the ladies football decider.

Murray is frustrated that women would rather follow their county’s hurling team. “I was at the ladies football final and I was jealous of the crowd at that because there was only 16,000 or so at the camogie final,” she said.

“We used to use the excuse back in the day when the Cork hurlers would be in the final that it was going to take from our support. If you look at the stats from the camogie final this year, the majority of the crowd, unfortunately, were from Galway.

“There is more of a local issue than a national issue so I think we need to fix it locally before we can move forward. The small crowds come down to a lot of things; it is not the cool thing to attend a camogie match.

“It is all about going to the hurling and football and going back to the pub afterwards and giving out about them all. It isn’t the cool thing [to attend a camogie game], it isn’t the done thing.”