Limerick's Róisín Ambrose on the difference between partner Aaron Gillane's career and her own

COMMITTED: Limerick footballer, Róisín Ambrose.

If anyone understands the very different playing fields, metaphorically, that women and men still occupy in Gaelic games it is surely a couple who both play ‘county’. 

Cork camogie star Ashling Thompson recently described the gap in player welfare supports between herself and boyfriend Darragh O’Donovan as “complete polar opposites.” 

Róisín Ambrose, who captains the Limerick footballers in Sunday’s TG4 All-Ireland Junior final against Down (11.45, TG4), is in the same boat. She’s doesn’t begrudge any bit of the support and success that her partner Aaron Gillane enjoys and got to share his latest hurling euphoria recently. 

“The timing was perfect. Our semi-final was on the Saturday, the hurling final was on the Sunday and we’d three weeks (break) to our final so we got to do a little bit of celebrating with them but I was back training on Wednesday,” she stresses with a smile. 

But she also observes: “It’s totally different for Aaron. 

“The men have it all, they’re nearly professional at this stage, That’s what our protest was about this year,” she says of female players taking some collective action earlier this Summer. “It was hard to do because you didn’t really know what way people would react. Thankfully it was all positive. Some people couldn’t believe what we have to go through to get X, Y and Z. 

“It’s probably only when you have someone of your own involved that you realise the difference,” Ambrose adds. She believes those difficulties – no travelling expenses and having to shell out themselves for gyms and medical treatment - directly contributes to the much bigger player turnover in women’s teams which also contributes to inconsistency. 

Just four – herself, Cathy Mee, Amy Ryan and Katie Heelan – are still involved from the Limerick squad whose five goal salvo ambushed Louth in the 2018 junior decider. “We’ve had a huge turnover every year. I think we have something like 15 new players on the panel this year. “Going travelling (abroad) is bigger in the women’s game,” she notes. “But another huge thing is the expense of it all. It costs too much to play. 

“In Limerick some of our players travel an hour or well over an hour to training. We train in west Limerick (Rathkeale) so if you’re coming from the Tipp or Cork border, from places like Ballylanders, it’s a full hour’s drive really.” 

She actually did it on the double but eventually quit inter-county camogie because of the constant stress and haggling over fixture clashes and none of her current teammates are dual. A PE and Irish graduate from UL, now teaching in Newport in Tipp, Ambrose won an O’Connor Cup and colleges’ HEC All Star in 2022 when her teammates included Siofra O’Shea, Hannah O’Donoghue, Anna Galvin and Fiadhna Tangney of Kerry and Cork’s Erika O’Shea. 

Limerick are now managed by former Kerry boss Graham Shine. Pipping Fermanagh in the last four was pivotal and not just because they’d lost semi-finals to them in 2020 and 2022. 

“It was a crazy game. There wasn’t a score for the first 26 minutes and then we came from four down to go three ahead and held on by a point. “We’ve lost semi-final after semi-final so to show that grit and determination to get back to a final was huge. 

“We lost to Down in the group stages, in Newcastle West, where so many of us play our camogie. That was really disappointing. We had a team meeting after that and, whether it was positive or negative, we all had our say.

“That was a big moment. We just said ‘we don’t want to be knocked out again in a semi-final’ and it paid off.”