Tom Humphries/LockerRoom: So, the last camogie final before the game turns a century old and gets given the keys to the house. What Tipperary and Cork served up in Croke Park yesterday was better than what Kilkenny and Cork delivered last week but comparisons are not the point.

It's just too easy for camogie to look at the game and its rapidly evolving state and smile to itself.

There were just over 16,000 in Croker yesterday for a match that deserved a full house. And the game annexed only modest amounts of media attention, the wash from last week's hurling final still sweeping over most of the weekend's newspapers. There is talk about celebrating the centenary year next year by popping the final onto the stage on the same day as the men's All-Ireland senior hurling final. Ho hum.

Just a guess but if that is done, the camogie might just be submerged. Media will be still in the grip of hurling fever (the chances being Kilkenny will be closing on three in a row), and on the same day as the camogie final gets played the stadium will be in the process of filling up and those already in will have half an eye on the field of play and half an eye on the bar or the programme or the friends they said they'd meet at the pillar.

Better, surely, to showcase the game during the summer on selected occasions?

This remarkable Tipperary side who yesterday took their fourth All-Ireland in five years should play before a few Tipperary championship games, Cork likewise and so on. Get people interested along the way. The year should be one long attempt to sell camogie and the final next September should be the barometer of how well the association has done.

Anyone who was at Croke Park yesterday for a remarkable junior final and a marginally less exciting senior game will know the time is right for evangelisation, the game needs to shake off its fuddy-duddy image and drag kids out by their ponytails to play. The "chicks with sticks" slogan has the game on the right track. What about ditching those skirts next and wearing shorts? Or putting the ages of players in programmes? Yesterday we were demurely told what "season" each player was in.

It made them sound like brood mares. What about making some superstars? What about a calendar girls stunt? Anything to grab attention.

Camogie enjoys some competitive advantages. Not only is there no better or more skilful team sport for girls but the constituency the game should be reaching out to isn't infected beyond redemption with the Premiership virus. It's not quite an open field out there but if camogie people put in the work they'll be turning kids away at the end of the day.

It requires new attitudes, though, the acceptance of new faces in clubs, the willing dismantlement of the Berlin Walls which camogie and hurling cliques like to put up around themselves. It means looking out your clubhouse window some days and seeing the minor football team training in a corner and the under-13 camogie team playing on the main pitch. And understanding that's a fine thing.

Girls need games to play. Girls need heroines. Girls need teams. Girls need safe environments to grow up in, clubhouses to which they can be dropped off and collected. Camogie has lots of advantages here.

Yesterday at Croke Park it was raining role models. Cork started off looking like a team that looked as if they'd been obsessing about Tipperary's strike rate of 17 goals in four championship games. The Cork full back smothered everything that came in early on. Stephanie Dunlea was outstanding while Tipp were held scoreless for the first 17 minutes.

With half-time just eight minutes away Cork led by four points to one but lots of things were changing. Emily Hayden, a most compelling figure in her yellow helmet, was becoming considerably more influential around the middle of the field, driving ball in towards the full-forward line and moving inevitably into the orbit of Cork's vaunted centre-back Mary O'Connor.

Raymie Ryan had begun to shuffle the Tipp full-forward line with Eimear McDonnell switching corners and Cork, unwisely perhaps, letting Joanne O'Callaghan follow her. Punishment was swift. On 25 minutes there was a smell of smoke as McDonnell burned grass down the right wing. Her solo finished with a goal. Clare Grogan added a point a little later.

Cork dealt with that. Three points before half-time restored their lead. Just a point but a lead nonetheless. They weren't to know Tipp were about to begin blowing like a hurricane. Deirdre Hughes, who'd be dangerous looking even if she was sitting in the stands eating chips, had moved into full forward. Two minutes into the half she'd stuck a goal (her seventh of the championship) into the space between the brackets that usually comes after her name. McDonnell followed up with a point.

Cork pulled two back but Tipp went on a crazy five-point spree without drawing a reply. That didn't kill the game but it reassured Tipp hearts. Some of the play during this time was powerful and majestic. One Tipperary move split Cork right open and deserved more. Hayden drove a fine low ball 40 yards into the path of Hughes whose control and vision found the right handpass to Emer McDonnell who clipped a point.

Somehow Cork heaved themselves back into the game. Gemma O'Connor, sister of Ben and Jerry ( I know, I know, bit naff to define a sports star by means of name-checking male relatives, view it instead as giving Ben and Jerry some media kudos through association with camogie. They have been living, after all, under the shadow of a Donal O'Grady news blackout all year) was taken off at one stage and then re-introduced as a forward. She nicked Cork's late goal and caused some havoc.

It was towards the end, well into injury-time in fact, when Cork smuggled that ball into the Tipp net. A couple of minutes earlier Jovita Delaney had made a fine save from a long-range free. Those last few minutes were the first reminder of the day Jovita had last year in Croke Park when Fiona O'Driscoll popped three of Cork's four goals and the Tipp full-back line left Jovita exposed like a lone tree on rocky ground.

Jovita suffered a bad car crash since then but that late goal yesterday was the first score she'd conceded in 180 minutes of championship play. I'd buy a bag of crisps off Jovita as soon as I'd buy them off DJ.

What struck one yesterday was that the game itself has outgrown its own image. It's the spin people who have to catch up for a change. What happened on the field was fast and physical and edgy. In the stands wearing county jerseys were a generation of young girls looking out for their own chance at sporting self-expression and for their own heroines.

Centenary year and the game has a chance to spread. In Dublin (thanks for asking) we are a long way off but coming fast. Under-age success converts quickly in camogie if handled right and those who have nightmares about the way Dublin played when Tipperary dismantled them this summer (Tipp left town with a 28-point win and more bruises than they could count) shouldn't feel afraid to keep going back.

Yesterday was a good one for a game about to celebrate a big birthday. There's a huge market out there for camogie to exploit and a giant constituency for a smart, brash sponsor to come in on. Media-wise there is a dawning of the fact women's sport is the last great untapped market.

Camogie debuted its own magazine last week and put on a fine show yesterday. There was a sense the train is pulling away from the station at last.