WIT and wisdom are key ingredients as camogie emerges from shadows

There were plenty of people in Carriganore yesterday saying every Ashbourne Cup should be held in the Waterford venue, and it was easy to see why.

The inter-varsity camogie competition was being held under clear blue skies and the turf was firm, with few pitches showing signs of wear and tear: unusual conditions for any third-level sports activity, to be honest. The final of the tournament was hardly over five minutes when the clouds rolled in to block out the sun, which only reinforced the sense of a smoothly-run operation.

Jackie O’Connor of the WIT organising committee — herself a camogie player with the south-east college — wasn’t claiming responsibility for the good weather, but they’d left little else to chance.

“We hosted the Fitzgibbon last year and knew from that what was involved,” she said.

“We contacted the local hotels and got a price from them and liaised with the teams on that. The hotels were a great support — and grateful for the custom. There were up to 500 girls involved, not to mention mentors, parents and so on.”

If the smooth operation last weekend is any barometer for the sport as a whole, then camogie is in a good place, an impression reinforced by the Camogie Association president.

Joan O’Flynn was able to substantiate her positivity with concrete examples.

“There’s a player from Mayo on the NUIG panel,” said O’Flynn. “That wouldn’t have been the case five years ago. On the DCU panel you’ve a player from Naomh Brid in Carlow. To me that shows the health of the game, when players from non-traditional counties are getting onto very strong panels.”

The Ashbourne Cup final itself was a good, tight game, with WIT collecting their fourth title in a row despite dogged resistance from UL. The quality of play was very high, as you might expect from teams sprinkled with senior inter-county stars.

Another twist to the weekend was the fact that the entire tournament took place within a long puck of the proposed National Hurling and Camogie Development Centre, the NHCDC, behind the main Carriganore campus. As it says in the name above the door, camogie functions as an equal partner there rather than as an adjunct to the men’s game.

“It’s a massive boost,” said O’Connor. “People had the wrong idea about having the centre in Waterford, an area where hurling and camogie is strong, with strong hurling counties like Kilkenny, Tipperary and Cork nearby.

“It’s more about having the hub here for information and it’s not as if people will just be sitting here. They’ll be going all over the country.”

The focus on the North is no accident. O’Flynn points to the work done by the Camogie Association to spread the gospel. She said: “The game’s been helped by the national development team, who are in the front line supporting clubs, and this year we established 30 new clubs.

“The new centre will also promote involvement — counties piloted for development include Down, Westmeath, Antrim, Carlow, Kerry, Laois . . . the county board in Kerry is only five or six years old, but two new adult clubs set up there this year. This is a great time to be setting up the national centre.”

It was certainly a great time to have the Ashbourne Cup. With WIT collecting the silverware and trooping off to begin what promised to be fairly epic celebrations, O’Flynn added that weekends like the one just gone are shop windows for the sport.

“Last weekend a lot of people will have seen their first camogie game,” she said.

“A lot of the time women’s sport suffers in comparison with men’s sport, but women’s sport has a value in its own right, and a lot of people leave a camogie game saying, ‘wow, I wasn’t expecting that’.”

They certainly were yesterday. They’ll find more at their clubs next weekend, and on weekends to come.