Locker Room: Gave the old email system its annual firing up there the other day. No Luddite me. Sitting there flashing like an ambulance siren was a note from somebody in Ballyboden St Enda's. It may be something in the water around where I live but nothing sends the old shivers scuttling down the spine quicker than an approach from Ballyboden St Enda's.

We proceeded gingerly. Checked for booby traps. Made sure there were no exploding cookies lurking. Contacted a solicitor. All to no avail.

Ballyboden, in conjunction with the library in Ballyroan ( there's an amalgamation we'd all like to see), are holding a good old Taispeántas an Chéid from today until the end of the week. For those of you with less than the bog-standard cúpla focal that's an exhibition of a century of camogie running from tomorrow until Saturday.

This seems like a wonderful idea and this column would be giving it a mention even if there wasn't a dire need to placate Boden types at every turn. For many people passing in and out of Ballyroan library it might be the first impact the centenary year of the sport of camogie has made.

The All-Ireland final is next weekend, of course, and hopefully the match will be a successful showcase to finish off what has been a disappointing year for camogie. The chicks with sticks have been decommissioned. The centenary year ambassadors haven't exactly been around spoiling us with Ferrero Rocher. The centenary year committee itself seems to have dissolved in disappointment. Where centenary year has been a success, well the sisters have been doing it for themselves.

A few good clubs who work at the game are still doing it. Camogie, which needs support and publicity and development, is lost at the highest levels in a welter of self-congratulation and mutual recrimination.

It's sad. The greatest game in the world is available to girls but football and bad organisation are killing it. Football is pleasurably easy to pick up. Camogie is hard but immensely rewarding. Five, six years ago Dublin was bristling with promising young camogie teams. In the clubs where football has been introduced for girls the camogie has fallen off drastically. You can't blame football. You just have to work harder.

That's the crux. There are people in life that you come to dread bumping into. Religious types who knock on the door. People who used to know U2. Taxi drivers with strong views on immigrants. Minority sports people with a gripe.

Camogie is odder than any one of them. Camogie is a minority sport. It just thinks it isn't. For instance. This column didn't just receive one email last week. There was an invitation to meet Christian singles in my area (why? Are they looking for heathen oul' fellas?) and there was a communication that came through from the Cork camogie people heralding a press night held last Friday evening at seven o'clock in Cork.

Now this column is all for press nights. Free sandwiches. A plague of clichés. PR people buzzing like wasps. Sure who wouldn't travel to the ends of the earth for a press night? Well intentioned though this Cork shindig undoubtedly was (didn't hear from Tipp at all) might we suggest that to have been holding a press evening at seven o'clock on the Friday night before the All-Ireland hurling final makes it practically a covert operation. There was a polite note at the end of the email requesting that the Cork team be left in peace after last Friday to prepare for the All-Ireland. No problemo.

Most of the mainstream press will leave the players in peace because camogie has failed to fight for its share of column inches. Back in the real world the hurling season is just finished. There's a press afternoon for the Kerry footballers next Friday. A few writers with affection and respect for the game of camogie will do pieces for next weekend. Camogie will disappear back into the shadows.

The reality is that Friday afternoon before an All-Ireland hurling final is an incredibly busy one for those of us who are unaccustomed to and poorly equipped for being busy at any time. Holding a press conference at seven in the evening guarantees no Dublin hack can make it back on the train. This may be seen as the media's problem. It's not. The Cork hurlers held their press session at 4:30 in the afternoon. Kerry's footballers are holding their's at a similar time.

When you are a minority sport you have to think that way. You have to pander. You have to do the thinking for the media. You have to serve it on a plate. You have to persist. You have to say "go on , go on go on, you will , you will, you will".

Why not get six players from each team into some room in Dublin this week and coral the media in? Bombard us with interesting facts. So and so is a tightrope walker in her spare time. A polar explorer. A brain surgeon. Here's the feature angles. Here's the people who'll tell their stories.

Where are those camogie ambassadors? What has happened the centenary committee? Who knows? I know this: a teacher from Cork rang me before the summer and we talked till our hearts were sore about the nightmare that is running camogie teams.

About the opportunity that is being wasted. Talked about lousy fixture planning and poor communications and the impossibility of even getting league tables out for juveniles.

Let's face it camogie and hurling are the greatest and most enjoyable games in the world but they are practice-intensive. Nothing comes cheap. You put practice in the bank all year and you'll get to be a better player. Turn your back on your skills for a week's holiday and you'll find you've depreciated. That's a game that needs selling.

So where are the poster girls? Whatever happened to the chicks with the sticks? When the chicks with sticks arrived there was some grumbling about the little black numbers and the general slinkiness. Is this what we have to do, people wondered. Don't know if it's what has to be done but it got people talking.

The greatest game in the world is what camogie has the franchise too. We're declining to tell kids about it, declining to develop or get organised.

Ballyboden have their exhibition all next week. If your daughter plays camogie bring her along next Sunday. If she doesn't play, take her by the ear and drag her along and show her what she's missing. March her down to your local GAA club and stick her on a team. If they haven't got camogie in the club sue them, badmouth them, pity them. Ring her school principal and demand to know why your daughter is being denied access to a crucial part of her culture. Do a coaching course and get out there yourself. Go to Croke Park next Sunday. Absorb some of the wonder that's available for girls.

And then push up from the grassroots. Camogie needs a revolution. It needs to push out that staid old image. It needs marketing. New energy. It needs too to be under the wing of the GAA, evangelising in clubs.

If it doesn't come there'll be no bicentenary. There won't even be another 20 years. The game is too splendid for that to be allowed happen.