Ursula Jacob: "I think there’s a strong case now for it just being ‘hurling’ across the board"

For Jacob, there’s a real concern as well as an upside that this year’s camogie final is another contest between two of the Big Three.

CHANGE IN NAME: Ursula Jacob believes there is a strong case for camogie to be called 'hurling' across the board. Picture: Maxwells

Just as there is at least a generation that wouldn’t know that Pat Spillane was once a marvellous footballer, you can forget or even be unaware that before you knew her from the TV, Ursula Jacob was a glorious hurler.

In 2011, the week after Stephen Cluxton kicked that defining free to win Dublin a long-waited All Ireland, Jacob won her second in 12 months, scoring 1-5 of Wexford’s 2-7 in a two-point win over Galway.

A year later she was even better again, going for 2-7 in the final against Cork. It was her and Wexford’s third All Ireland in a row, their fourth in six seasons when you threw in the one they won in 2007.

Special player, special team, special times.

Just how special though wasn’t appreciated at the time. Wexford haven’t been to a senior final since. Every subsequent All-Ireland has not just been won by either one of Cork, Galway or Killkenny but the only time anybody else has even reached one was last year when Waterford were trounced by 19 points by Cork.

And so when Jacob surveys the hurling landscape – because, as we’ll return to, it’s all hurling now as far as she’s concerned – there’s a real concern as well as an upside to the fact that this year’s women’s final is another contest between two of the Big Three.

That upside? It should be close. In the 10 finals between the Jacob final of 2012 and then Cork’s demolition of Waterford last year, the average winning margin was just 3.7 points.

“I know Cork beat Galway by 12 points earlier in the championship but I’d be shocked if there’s anything more than three or four points between the teams on Sunday,” says Jacob. “When the sides met in last year’s league final and the one the year before that again it was Galway who won both by four points. So the two sides will go out and showcase camogie in a really good manner. The standard of the two teams is very high.

“But if you’re looking at attracting wider audiences, then you would have to be worried about the standard across the board.” 

A promising sign has been Tipperary and Waterford been increasingly competitive in recent years. Waterford reached last year’s final, albeit without beating any of the Big Three en route, while in this year’s quarter-final they got within three points of Galway. Tipp beat Galway in this year’s league final and only lost to them by a point in last month’s All Ireland semi-final. Time will tell if both sides have been knocking on the door before Kelly-like kicking it in or if they’ve just been hitting a glass ceiling.

Pictured (L-R) are Laois’ Liadan C Fennell, Cork’s Lauren Homan, Galway’s Roisin Black, Camogie president Brian Molloy, Cork’s Molly Lynch, Kilkenny’s Cria Langton and Tipperary’s Sinead Meagher at the 2024 Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Championship Finals Launch. Pic ©INPHO/Ben Brady

“You still have the same teams dominating. Your Cork and your Galways. Kilkenny have slipped back a bit though they’d still be up there. But we’ve 12 teams in the senior ranks and I see a massive gap between the top five teams and the other seven. You can say Dublin reached a semi-final, beating Kilkenny in the quarter-final, but then they got beaten by 20 points by Cork.

“If you look at the championship there were a lot of one-sided games. Tipp beat Derry by 23, Antrim by 22, Limerick by 33. The nearest anyone got within Cork was nine. Galway beat Down by 41. Those kind of results do nothing for either team.” 

The whole sport is a bit like that. Small progress in some areas, then considerable regression in others, leading to an overall sense of stagnation. All Ireland quarter-finals and semi-finals are televised live now but when was the last time you saw a camogie clip go viral? How many players do you know from either team involved on Sunday?

“I remember looking at the Lidl ads and seeing Sinead Goldrick and Vikki Wall looking out at me. And they became known around the country; people were drawn to their games. But who are the faces of camogie?” 

She thinks of Amy O’Connor, who went for 3-7 in last year’s All Ireland, 0-4 more than Shane O’Donnell went for in the 2013 hurling final replay. Everyone knew his face and name; would you recognise O’Connor’s?

She namechecks Niamh Kilkenny. Was playing for Galway as far back as 2006, took time out there to have a baby but is back now. What a story. What a player. One of the best to ever do it. Do you know who she is? Camogie should be ensuring that you do. Make stars of the stars. Or at least showcase plays. 

“People maybe won’t sit down half an hour to watch the highlights of a match but they’ll watch the best plays of the weekend on their phone.” 

There’s so many ways the game could be marketed and promoted better. Like Eimear Ryan in these pages, she’s more than open to rebranding the sport by renaming it.

“I remember when I was working in WIT we used to have international students who I’d do a skill session with and they’d get really confused wondering what’s camogie and what’s hurling and what’s the difference. It can be a barrier, an unnecessary one at this stage.

“I mean, we’re just all hurlers at the end of the day. When I was playing, I was hurling! And I considered myself a hurler and wanted to be considered a hurler. So I think there’s a strong case now for it just being ‘hurling’ across the board. Especially with the playing rules becoming more and more alike.

“I was a forward all my life but was delighted they got rid of the handpass goal. There was no skill in it, it didn’t look good. Now there’s more contact allowed. The more the playing rules mirror hurling the better.” 

She has so many other ideas. Maybe push the championship out to further in the year so it has less time in the shadow of the men’s. Fully embrace intergration with the GAA. Maybe revise splitting the league into a stronger section and a weaker section as the latter group are shell-shocked when they meet the top teams in the championship. The more teams that can respectably compete, the easier it is to promote the game.

“There are still good numbers playing camogie in Wexford. But I’d be afraid we’re maybe not retaining as many players after 16 and 17 because of different sports and options girls have. There’s a real job there for the camogie association to look at getting more girls to stick with it.

“And that’s why you need new teams to emerge. Because otherwise girls from counties outside the usual suspects are going to lose interest; they’ll see winning All Irelands is nearly impossible.” Jacob showed back when she hurled that it isn’t.