Eimear Ryan: Camogie belongs as another headline act on hurling's Electric Picnic

Kilkenny players celebrate at the final whistle after winning the All-Ireland camogie title. Picture: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

At the final whistle in Croke Park on Saturday night, the pent-up emotion of the last nine months were plain to see in the faces and body language of those involved, from Brian Dowling’s exuberant leps to the frustration etched across the faces of the Galway defenders. It’s been quite a year, and on a night like this, all the joy, pain and catharsis comes pouring out.

At least three players on the pitch — Sarah Dervan, Niamh Kilkenny and Collette Dormer — had to postpone their weddings this year. Caitriona Cormican and Grace Walsh are among the squads’ frontline healthcare workers. Katie Power was there on crutches; Kellyann Doyle was back playing after tearing her cruciate in March.

To say that all these players have burst a gut to get themselves into a final two weeks before Christmas would be an understatement.

Margins. There really only is a puck of a ball — or a blow of a whistle — between the top few teams in camogie. On their path to the final, Kilkenny finished up their group stage with a scoring difference of +52 points, but won their semi-final against Cork by just two and the final by a goal, courtesy of the unflappable Denise Gaule in the 57th minute. The reverse angle on her penalty really highlighted the precision and repetitive practice that went into it; training-ground excellence brought to the biggest stage in the sport.

Galway keeper Sarah Healy had a very solid game but the shot was unstoppable. I can’t have been the only spectator murmuring ‘Take your point’ when Gaule stepped up to the set-piece, but she knew exactly what she was doing.

Afterwards, the penalty was the major talking point, having ultimately been the deciding factor between the two teams. It’s true that it wasn’t the most blatant penalty in the world. Gaule was brought down in the square, but as a culmination of three Galway backs bearing down on her rather than a cynical foul by an individual defender.

In the end, Galway can have few complaints about that decision. I do feel, however, that they were unfairly penalised in the 25th minute, when Niamh Kilkenny’s storming run through on goal was called back, the final pass from Ailish O’Reilly having been deemed to be a throw ball. Having watched it back, I thought it was a perfectly fine handpass.

It was frustrating for two reasons: it called a halt to one of the best moves of the match, and it highlighted how infrequently that rule is invoked in the men’s game, where ambiguous slung handpasses have become the norm. But to be fair to referee Owen Elliott, he had a good game overall, letting the game flow and ensuring that the final was a nail-biting spectacle — not strictly a ref’s raison d’etre, but arguably giving the people what they want.

The other main talking point, of course, was the newcomers. When you can afford to have quiet games from Miriam Walsh and Ann Dalton, both leaders who led the charge against Cork, you know you’re on to something. Michelle Teehan, Aoife Doyle, Mary O’Connell and Katie Nolan were all making their All-Ireland final debuts, and all of them put in energetic, hardworking shifts. The confidence of the three forwards, in particular, was remarkable, all of them scoring important long-range points from play.

Kilkenny’s Meighan Farrell, Denise Gaule, Anna Farrell and Miriam Walsh celebrate. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie

Aoife Doyle, in particular, looks to be an outrageous talent, as her opening point from the right wing demonstrated. And yet, twice in the game she found herself with only Sarah Healy to beat, and twice she fired it over the crossbar.

I was glad for her as a young player that the game didn’t come down to those chances.

She knew it herself, too. ‘I’ll be sickened about that,’ she said afterwards as she accepted her Player of the Match award. Experience will stand to her, and she’ll be calmly slotting goals away for years to come; but for now, four points from play in an All-Ireland final is an excellent return.

Headline event

It was wonderful, too, to see camogie share in the excitement of All-Ireland final weekend. Staging the camogie final the night before the hurling decider made it feel less like a curtain-raiser and more like a fellow headliner at some kind of hurling Electric Picnic. It feels only natural for the two codes to co-operate and share space.

There was more good news on this front earlier this week when the GPA and WGPA voted in near-unanimity to merge their associations into one 4,000-member body. Camogie players and ladies footballers have been calling for more integration with the GAA for years, and it’s inspiring to see the players leading the way on this, and gratifying to know that the fellas have their female counterparts’ backs.

That support has never felt more important. I resisted writing about the recent ladies football fiasco, in which Cork and Galway were shunted from venue to venue for their All-Ireland semi-final, because it was somehow both enraging and boring. On the one hand, how is this sort of thing still happening in the year of our lord 2020? But on the other hand, maybe I was naïve to think that it wouldn’t; that women wouldn’t be the first to be thrown under the bus as soon as a scarcity in resources arose.

“But they’re different organisations. Of course the men should get first dibs on GAA grounds,” the argument often goes. As if women have any choice in who governs their games, or could simply pull themselves up by their football bootstraps.

To my mind, the sooner the women’s associations merge with the GAA, and render this particular line of argument obsolete, the better.