After playing in the Kilkenny county camogie final on Sunday, the bones are creaking. But sure look, I can retire happy now. Piltown won the intermediate title 10 years ago and we’d been plugging away since then trying to get the senior. And finally, it happened.
I should point out, I was only a bit-part player this season. I played a bit of Leinster League earlier in the year, but with my Peamount United commitments, I only came in at the tail end of the championship. And they didn’t expect me down for training or anything like that, they were very good to me.
I’ve been incredibly lucky along the way to have experienced special days with Ireland and Peamount, but winning that county title was different because I just saw how happy it made all of our families and friends. Soccer has been more about personal goals, this was just properly about the parish.
Of course, there are common factors between any sports, but in camogie, while the commitment is huge, we just accept that it’s amateur and is driven by volunteers.
With soccer in Ireland, we’re kind of lost in between amateurism and professionalism and it should be gone beyond that. We are amateur, but the players are giving, easily, four days a week to it. And still, there are no structures to move it along. But it feels like our league is looked down on.
That’s why I loved Ciarán Kilduff speaking so passionately last week. And he did so probably knowing that he was about to step down as Athlone Town manager, which he did after Sunday’s FAI Cup final, having led them to their first league title. In his short time with Athlone, he has been amazing for our league.
I think some of his comments were taken out of context or just plain misunderstood, but while I didn’t agree with everything he said, that doesn’t matter. He cares. And that’s great. Someone with a platform like that, someone who’s that talented and so highly regarded, it was great that he was using his voice. Fair play to him.
His main point was that there is a “disconnect” between the league here and the international set-up. And that is undeniable. The people running the two are just on different sides of the hallway at FAI HQ in Abbotstown, but they’re miles apart.
The ditching of the home-based sessions, which gave players in our league the chance of making it to the senior international squad, and the failure so far to replace them with the much talked about under-23 set-up, has, as Kilduff said, left players feeling like they’re not being seen.
The budget is, apparently, the blocker, but how much would it cost to bring girls up to Abbotstown once every two weeks? Compared to what that would give back to the league? And the league has been brilliant for Irish football, it has been the root of our international team’s success, it was the starting ground for over half of our World Cup squad in 2023. But it is just not appreciated.
My days of playing for Ireland are over, but I see gifted players all around me, at my club and others, who need the motivation of a structure at home that will encourage them and reassure them that they are being seen. Otherwise, they’re left feeling their only option is to go abroad, and while I admire that ambition, they can fall by the wayside if they leave too young. And as soon as their Leaving Certs are done, I’m pretty sure we’ll see more going away again.
I fully accept Eileen Gleeson’s comment, in response to Kilduff, that the professional environments these players are joining abroad are superior to what we have at home. But we can’t bridge that gap alone, we need help. But what is the vision for our league? I just don’t know what that looks like because we’ve never been told. What’s the ultimate goal? Is it to become a professional league? Or is it ‘go abroad and hope to make an impact’, and hope that you get the headlines and the manager’s attention? Instead of saying our league isn’t good enough to produce senior internationals, why don’t you do something to make it better?
And Gleeson, much as she is rooted in the league, is, understandably, focused on the national team now. But she is the face of it all, so she has a duty to look after the game at home too and remove some of the snobbery towards it.
We hoped after the World Cup that everything would change, but since then we’re just pinning our hopes on the Irish team, a standalone team. And whatever happens, kind of happens with the league. That’s how it feels.
It’s just a real pity. There’s such a feel-good factor around our national team. They gave us the World Cup, the players are so approachable, they give their time, they’re brilliant in interviews, they’re inspiring. But none of that feel-good factor has extended to the league that produced so many of them. Instead, it takes them up to under-19, then sends them abroad, job done.
That’s why I welcomed Ciarán Kilduff’s comments and his passion. Anything that starts this debate is only a good thing, although we’re all blue in the face from the talking when it’s action that we need.
We won’t have Katie McCabe, Denise O’Sullivan and Louise Quinn forever, so we need to produce more of them. Unless we tend to and nourish the roots from where they sprang, we could struggle. Always look after the parish.
