20×20, a new initiative for women in Irish sport, was launched in Dublin earlier this month to get behind female sport in a concerted effort to increase media coverage, boost attendances and ultimately, grow involvement in female sport and physical activity by 20% by the end of 2020.
The initiative was very well received and CEO of the Federation of Irish Sport, Mary O’Connor said that 20×20 want this campaign to stimulate behavioural change to ensure that subsequent generations have female role models to emulate as athletes, coaches and referees, but what about the current players? Who were their role models?
Dublin Camogie goalkeeper Faye McCarthy had role models but they weren’t always the type of national role models that kids generally aspire to emulate.
“Playing at U10, we had Deirdre Joyce at St. Jude’s who was a little younger than our parents,” said McCarthy at AIB’s launch of the GAA Club championships.
“She played herself and was a role model in that way. Other than that it was male role models you’d see on the telly. For me it was definitely Brendan Cummins and Anthony Nash.
“There was no female role models who were high profile. It’s not that they didn’t exist, I just didn’t see them.
“But I think having the All-Ireland quarter-finals on tv now is another huge step forward. My own sister was at this year’s quarter-final and after it she would ask me to come and take frees with her. It pushed her on to develop her own skills because she had those girls on my team to look up to.”
Dublin has made considerable strides as a Camogie county over the course of this decade with the senior team reaching their first All-Ireland semi-final since 1990 last year before they were unceremoniously dumped from this year’s championship with a considerable 0-20 to 0-4 quarter-final loss to Galway last month.
McCarthy admits that nerves probably got the better of the Dublin side that day, and that they were probably showing the Cork, Kilkennys and Galways too much respect, but she added that there is potential for the county to get back to the last four again despite recently losing manager David Herity to Kildare.
“It was a huge blow to us,” McCarthy said of the Galway game.
“We just didn’t play the hurling that we should have been playing. I don’t think anyone who came off that pitch said they put in their best performance. We just had a bad day, it ’s a bad excuse but I think we just had a bad day.
“I think the key will be that we all stick together and move forwards instead of backwards. We have our own standards, we know what we need to do, it’s just a case of having the stamina to do it.
“I think mentally we need to up our standards for ourselves. We put the time in, it’s just a case of being smart about it and committing. We have the potential, I don’t see why we won’t progress from there.”
Meanwhile on a club level McCarthy is preparing for an AIB Leinster Senior Camogie Club Championship semi-final with Kilkenny’s Thomastown on Sunday.
St. Jude’s sealed the Dublin Senior Camogie Club Championship with an extra-time win over Na Fianna last weekend and McCarthy said that she had actually created a video before the game to underline just how much their progress had meant to current and past players.
“Early this season a team-mate and I were asked by our manger to make a video where those who had trained us before, past players and those who had gone a broad offered us encouragement. We showed it on Sunday night and it got a great reaction. It showed us that the support was there.
“The first division 1 win was huge. We had such a big crowd of support for Judes and it was insane. They had a homecoming for us, like the support they had was crazy. Because it is such a big achievement, not only for us but for the club to have the female team win Division 1 in the 40th year of our existence so it was huge.
“We’re on a high now and it’s not something any of us have ever done [Thomastown game] before so we’re really just looking forward to it. We really want to show off what we can do, what we’ve been working on for the past year and enjoy it.”
Jude’s will travel to Thomastown at 2pm on Sunday to try and take down the Kilkenny champions and advance to the Leinster final.
