Eimear Ryan: Camogie can no longer skort around this issue
CHANGING THE WAY: London club Thomas McCurtains have launched a campaign to drive support for a motion to remove the skort from camogie in favour of shorts.
The camogie players of Thomas McCurtains GAA club have had enough. When they go to support their colleagues in hurling, football and ladies football, their clubmates are all playing in that quintessential GAA fashion item: O’Neill’s togs. Only the camogie players have to wear a skort: essentially, a pair of shorts with a skirt-like flap in the front.
But instead of merely giving out about it, and wearing togs at every possible opportunity (training, practice matches) the way the rest of us do, the women of Thomas McCurtains have taken action. Last weekend, they launched their Shorts Not Skorts campaign at their grounds in east London, wearing the camogie-branded togs that they’ve now made a part of their official strip. They’ve even carried out a survey of 240 people, the results of which they published in a report called The Long and Skort of it (full marks on the puns).
Respondents to the survey said that skorts were ‘uncomfortable’, ‘unflattering’ and ‘patronising’, with 82% saying that they preferred to wear togs to skorts while playing camogie. The hope is that this report will help move the dial at the Camogie Association’s annual congress at the end of the month, where a motion will be proposed to replace skorts with togs in the official playing gear. Skorts have long been complained about in camogie circles, but in the year of our lord 2023, the issue might finally come to a head. No longer can the Camogie Association skort around the issue (apologies, everyone).
The skort question is just one of many conversations taking place around women’s playing gear. The move of several women’s soccer clubs and ladies football teams to adopt dark shorts, to make it easier for women to play while on their period, is sensible and long overdue. Women’s comfort and performance, and not just their appearance, are beginning to be prioritised.
While you’ll often see skorts in tennis and golf, they are not part of an enforced dress code; it’s up to the tennis player or golfer herself whether to wear shorts or a skort. Wear togs in a camogie championship match, on the other hand, and you’re liable to get a yellow card.
But is there really any harm in a skort? I’ve worn them for years without much hassle, although I do find togs more comfortable. The issue, I suppose, is that their only function is to signify the gender of the player. Other signifiers on sportswear, such as team colours and jersey numbers, are of benefit to the players as well as the spectators; the flap of material on the front of a skort is only there for the benefit of the audience, lest they forget that these are ladies playing.
Tradition, of course, comes into it as well. Historically, sportswomen wore ladylike clothes to counteract any stigma of masculinity that might accompany their athleticism. More power to the women of Thomas McCurtains: sometimes, tradition finds a new relevance in modern times, but sometimes it should be consigned to history.
If you could have heard me on the couch in front of TG4 last Saturday evening, cackling with glee as Conor Bowe banged in Tipp’s third goal. We’re back!, I told my couch companion (the cat), reliving the memories of Tipp’s glory days in the twenty-teens. The very definition of losing the run of myself.
Liam Sheedy was in similarly animated form on Allianz League Sunday, enthusing about Tipp’s performance and heralding the dawn of the Liam Cahill era. The scoring stats are reassuring: Tipp have scored an average of 33 points per match, with ten goals in four games. Liam Cahill’s goalscoring mindset may be at odds with the prevailing style of shooting the lights out from distance, but so far this season it’s working out. Jason Forde came off the bench and nabbed five points from play. Bonner was emphatically back, as good as I’ve seen him, his turnover and quick pass to Noel McGrath for a point in the eighth minute really encapsulating what he brings to this team. But what was most apparent was that there was a little bit of a sting in Tipp that maybe hasn’t been to the forefront before.
And then there was Jake Morris and his three lethal goals. As Jackie Tyrell correctly identified on RTÉ’s GAA podcast, there is a touch of Lar Corbett about Morris – a floater with a burst of pace, liable to show up in unusual places at unexpected times, and in possession of a killer finish. Like Lar, Morris is an occasionally frustrating player in that he can disappear in games – but if a ball breaks at the edge of the square, he’s the one you want to see latching onto it.
Seamus Callanan’s knee injury, confirmed as damage to his medial ligament, is a huge blow and will mean he’ll likely miss the first two games in the Munster championship. This is the danger of the latter stages of the league: injury is statistically inevitable, and there is precious little time to recover. Managers will be saying rosaries and burning sage that their players will stay more or less intact for the next few weeks.
So it’s looking like Cork, Limerick, Tipp, and either Kilkenny or Waterford as the final four. While it’s a good position for Tipp to be in at this stage, it doesn’t answer the most relevant question for Tipp fans this summer: what two counties, besides Limerick, will get out of Munster? Even though the championship now resembles the league format, you can’t simply map league results onto Munster as any indication of championship performance. The onset of optimism feels dangerous as well as exciting. But of course this is part of why we love sport – the eternal hope, the ‘always next year’ of it all. It’s the hope that kills you, but it sustains you as well.
