Camogie
Camogie is a game of Irish origin and remains predominantly a game of Ireland. It is quite clearly a women’s derivative of hurling, the national sport of Ireland, a fast and forcefully played ball-and-stick game played by two teams of fifteen players each. As a distinct sport, hurling has origins that stretch back nearly two thousand years. It became widely played across Ireland in its modern form after the leaders of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) drew up the rules in 1884. Camogie is played elsewhere across the globe by members of the Irish Diaspora, those Irish men and women who live outside their native land.
Camogie and Irish Nationalism
Camogie is a sport born of Irish women’s nationalist sentiments.The GAA had strong links with the nationalist movements that formed the backbone of the Irish revolution against British rule that began in the late 1890s. The revolution would culminate in the War of Independence fought between the British and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the division of Ireland between the independent South and the British North.
Women played a key role in the revolutionary period as soldiers, organizers, fund-raisers, and ideologues. Because the Gaelic Athletic Association played such a key role in revolutionary activity, it was natural that nationalist-minded women would turn their attention to the Gaelic sports. These sports, Gaelic football and hurling, were viewed as representative of good Irish values, such as morality and strength, and had ancient Irish origins. They were also a complete counterbalance to what the Irish saw as the “corrupt” sports of the British imperialists, such as soccer (association football) and cricket, both closely associated with the British Army.
That camogie was, indeed, a political statement as well as a game became clear in 1917. The strong links between the GAA and the activities of political nationalists were demonstrated that year at the funeral of Thomas Ashe. Arrested by the British for inciting the civil population, Ashe had gone on a hunger strike in prison in an attempt to secure political status for nationalist prisoners. He died as a result of force-feeding, and his funeral became a showpiece for the aspirations of nationalist politics. Because Ashe had been a leading member of the GAA, a large number of GAA members attended his funeral. At the core of this group were scores of women in full mourning dress carrying their camogie sticks (camog). At the outbreak of the modern troubles in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, nationalist women regularly paraded in Belfast carrying their camog as a marker of their affiliation to the nationalist cause.
History of the Game
Hurling was a game that was deemed too violent and masculine for women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and thus women developed their own game.The first camogie club was formed in 1898 in Navan, County Meath, specifically to play one match as part of the centenary celebrations of the 1798 Rising against the British presence in Ireland.The first modern games of what can be identified as formally organized camogie were apparently played in 1902 by members of the Gaelic League, a radical Irish language and cultural organization. In these early days, the game was heavily based on the rules and spirit of hurling. In 1904 the first formal rules of camogie were drawn up. The term camogie was dreamed up by the Cork language scholar Tadhg O Donnchadha. As with many other Irish terms that originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “camogie” was a word for a game whose invented traditions were representative of Irish characteristics, but that had no actual roots in Irish folklore or history, and thus had no traditional name.The first game under the new rules was organized in Craobh a’ Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of the Gaelic League, and was played on 17 July 1904 in Navan, near Dublin, between two Dublin-based clubs; Craobh a’ Chéitinnigh defeated Cúchulaoinns 1–0.
Cumann Camógaíochta, the Camogie Association of Ireland (CAA), was founded on 25 February 1905 by the women who played the sport, and Máire Ní Chinnéide was elected the first president. By 1913 the firstever college club was formed by Professor Una Ní Fhaircheallaigh, a lecturer in Modern Irish and eventually chair of Modern Irish Poetry, at University College Dublin. Ní Fhaircheallaigh’s role in the sport was so important that she remained president of the university’s club from 1914 until 1951, and was president of the Camogie Association of Ireland in 1941–1942. She was also instrumental in convincing William Gibson, the second Lord Ashbourne, to donate the Ashbourne Cup as the prize for the winners of the annual intervarsity camogie championship in 1915. This trophy is played for to this day. By the start ofWorldWar I, camogie was being played in seventeen of Ireland’s thirty-two counties. By then it had also spread to London and New York, and each city had some six teams. It was in NewYork City that the American Camogie Association (ACA) was founded in 1930. Although a distinct body responsible for the administration of camogie, the Camogie Association of Ireland works with the recognition of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The women’s association is organized in the same way as the GAA, and its tournaments are run on a similar basis.
The local parish is the base for all Gaelic games. It is here that teams are organized on the local level and the games enjoy the widest participation.The parish teams play in league tournaments, and over the course of the season (March to September), the best players are selected to play at the county level. The thirty-two counties play knockout matches in four separate groupings, based on the four provinces of Ireland (Ulster, Connaught, Leinster, and Munster).The county winners of the four provincial titles play off in semifinals for the privilege of playing in the All- Ireland final. The first official intercounty games were played on 12 July 1912 between Dublin and Louth at Croke Park, the Dubliners winning 2–1. In 1932 an All- Ireland championship was formally started and was won by Dublin. The game had spread to such an extent by the 1930s that every one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland had representative teams. The respectability of the game in the eyes of the male custodians of the Gaelic Athletic Association and its attraction to supporters was such that by 1934 the All-Ireland final was allowed to be played at the GAA’s headquarters in Croke Park. The final approval of the GAA-camogie relationship came in 1980 when the women’s sport appointed its first full-time paid official, who was provided with an office at Croke Park paid for by the Gaelic Athletic Association.
Camogie has been fortunate in that, since its early years, it is has attracted committed and long-serving administrators who have done much to promote the game, including such legendary figures as Una Bean Úi Phuirséach and Shelia McNulty, both of whom served as president and general secretary of the association. Men have also been centrally important in the promotion of the game. Unlike other sports and cultures in which men appear to hold back and discourage the growth of women’s sport, the committeemen and promoters of Gaelic games have worked well with the women who organized camogie. Camogie is seen as part of the cultural and nationalistic crusade to promote an independent sense of Irishness that is the ultimate function of Gaelic games. As such, men have been keen advocates of camogie and view it as an equally valid and important expression of Irish sporting and nationalistic culture as either hurling or Gaelic football. These men included Séan O’Duffy,who worked for seventy-five years promoting camogie, and Pádraig Puirséal, the legendary Gaelic games correspondent of the Irish Press, who did his utmost to promote the game in his columns. In 1966, when the first National Training Programme for Coaches was instigated, the majority of participants in the courses were men. Since 1999 the spirit of camogie as a game has moved closer to that of hurling.While certain rule differences remain, the game is now played by two sides of fifteen, and on the full-size GAA pitch.
In the last two decades, the game of camogie, while remaining strictly amateur at the playing level, has developed into a modern commercial organization. From 1986 annual courses in administration, refereeing, and public relations have been held, and the association became an official member of the government-funded National Coaching and Training Centre Programme. In 1995 the association signed its first-ever national sponsorship deal. In keeping with the national spirit of the organization, the agreement was signed with the governmental body charged with promoting the use of the Irish language, Bord na Gaelige.The need for such sponsorship to support an amateur game was highlighted in 2003 when the association appointed its first full-time sponsorship and finance manager.
Two women playing camogie.
Rules and Play
Camogie is played by two teams, each with fifteen women. The field is the same as that which is used for hurling. The standard measurements are 110 meters long and 68 meters wide.The stick (camog) is based on the hurley (caman) of the men’s game, although it usually made to a lighter weight specification. The stick is used to advance the ball, pass to a teammate, shoot at the goal, or take the ball from the other team. At either end of the pitch are H-shaped goalposts in the same style as the posts in Rugby Union.The bottom sections of the posts are netted as in soccer. To score a player must hit the ball (sliothar) over the top section of the uprights for one point, or else hit the ball into the bottom net for three points.The winner of the game is the team with the highest total score. Players wear footwear, shorts, and shirts bearing the colors of their team or county, and some players will choose to wear headgear to protect them from injuries caused by the ball or stick. Matches last 70 minutes; two halves of 35 minutes each.
Given the GAA’s dominant role in the new Irish State that was formed in 1922, Gaelic games became the officially sanctioned sports in Ireland and were encouraged at the school level. As the foremost women’s game, camogie was positioned as the main game for girls in schools, a tradition that continues to the present. As the main school sport for girls, camogie has a huge pool of players, supporters, and organizers for its adult competitions. It currently has 78,000 playing members: 14,000 at the under-13 age level, 40,000 between 13 and 18, 20,000 between 19 and 35, and 4,000 players in the over-35 category. Until the 1990s, camogie was unchallenged as the most popular sport for women in Ireland. It now faces serious challenges from the growth in support for women’s Gaelic football.
In 2004 the association celebrated its centenary. A yearlong series of events was staged across Ireland, including a banquet, a historical exhibition at the Gaelic Athletic Association museum, and the naming of the camogie team of the century.
Further Afield
All the Gaelic games have been taken overseas by those millions of Irish men and women who have left Ireland’s shores over the centuries. Other aspects of Irish culture, such as music, have survived transplantation to other nations better than have the games, but pockets of activity remain. Irish emigrants apparently prefer sporting assimilation to sporting separation and have thus more readily adapted to sports such as baseball and Australian Rules football, rather than continuing Gaelic games on foreign fields. Nevertheless, the GAA is an international organization, and Gaelic Athletic Association clubs can be found across the globe in nations such as the United States, Canada, China, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Camogie is usually found in all those clubs. It may not be as buoyant as Gaelic football or hurling, but it has its core of women adherents who play camogie in the same way, with the same rules, and with the same enthusiasm as they do on the playing fields of Clare or Roscommon.
Mike Cronin
Categories: Sports-Field