“Other years we’ve had launches and we’ve had press conferences and, you know, you would have a handful of people around the place.”
Marie Hickey faced the firing squad.
Lady Ball was the order of the day at the LGFA sponsorship announcement and NFL launch but the president of the association was in upbeat form.
“The amount of people who are aware of us now is just amazing. Here we have a crowd today and we have lots of interest and lots of questions and it speaks for itself.”
In fairness, Croke Park was an absolute hive of activity on Thursday afternoon.
Every county was represented, every form of media was there in their numbers and there was a genuine buzz around the place.
The problem? Well, all anyone wanted to talk about was Lady Ball.
A marketing ploy devised by Lidl to spoof the apparent perception of ladies sport before announcing their partnership with the LGFA drew a lot of attention, sure. But it was designed to then drag us away from those perceptions and into the reality that these inter-county athletes are serious about their football and that they deserve to be treated so.
The game is up. #Ladyball #SeriousSupport @lidlireland @LadiesFootballhttps://t.co/PysI14iq2A
— Lady Ball (@theladyball_com) January 15, 2016
A fantastic ploy and you can’t argue with the traction. But if the idea is that the end justifies the means, it’s hard to accept that entirely when you consider that Hickey, the LGFA president, was asked 14 questions on Thursday. The first 10 of them were to do with Lady Ball.
“It does [the end justifies the means],” Hickey was adamant. “Any advertising campaign, no matter how controversial it is, has a focus and I think the thought of the fact that Lidl has shown that they are supporting and seriously supporting our players, that’s what it’s all about.
“We’ve had coverage all over the world as a result of it, which has been wonderful. Initially, when they put the ads out about it, I was getting phone calls about how ridiculous this is and how demeaning it is and ‘what are you going to do about it’ and all those kind of things.
“Then, when it transpired what it was really about, I think everybody thought ‘wow, that was brilliant. What a wonderful campaign. What a wonderful way of raising awareness, generating a bit of controversy and then turning around and showing the real picture behind it.'”
Dublin footballer, Carla Rowe, acknowledged that the campaign was obviously sexist but that it worked.
“I think it was brilliant,” she said. “It’s gotten a bit of negative feedback but it got people talking and that’s exactly what you want. The media sometimes do need to push it out to be negative in order to get the reaction that they want but hopefully it will bring crowds to matches.”
Ladies football is on the rise and, more and more, the athletes are getting the recognition they deserve. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a campaign that has us off-topic during the league launch is helping that but Rowe can see its benefits.
“I know there are a few people talking and, sure, the reaction it got on the internet alone, there was so many people who mightn’t have ever known about ladies Gaelic and they were commenting on it so, if that’s what they were aiming for, they reached their goal.
“One of the girls had mentioned that she thought it mightn’t be serious but then it was still going on a couple of days later and I was kind of worrying.
“Everyone who is playing ladies football would’ve been a bit taken back by it considering it was quite sexist but, when you see the end results of it, I know in Dublin anyway that we’re all delighted with it.”
The Lidl sponsorship, right across the board of ladies football is huge and it is truly, truly important.
Some fantastic work is going to be done alongside the company, particularly in the promotion of our games for ladies. Billboards are already rolling out and the players are buzzing about it.
It doesn’t mean that this Lady Ball campaign will have played any real part in it because, honestly, the sexism and the negative reaction of it was all anyone wanted to talk about at the launch of the ladies National Football League.
