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Dublin camogie player Niamh Gannon has expressed disappointment and frustration at the decision of the association’s Congress recently not to allow players wear shorts.
There were two motions tabled at the gathering in The Westgrove Hotel earlier this month looking to change the rule which compels players to wear a skort, but both were unsuccessful in meeting the threshold required during the voting process.
Tipperary’s motion wanted to remove the wording “skirt/skort/divided skirt” completely and replace it instead with “shorts” as the attire of choice, but it was defeated – with 64 per cent of delegates voting against it.
A Great Britain proposal sought to add shorts as an option for players alongside the skirt/skort/divided skirt. However, 55 per cent voted against that motion.
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“(I’m) hugely disappointed that we have to speak about it,” said Gannon. “It’s hard to believe that people who aren’t playing are the ones making these decisions.
“Personally, I would much prefer to wear shorts, I don’t mind the skorts, but I think everyone should have a choice.
“From our own team, if you show up to training not one girl will be in a skort. So, we only wear them (for matches) because we have to wear them.
“The bigger issue is, for younger girls who play both football and camogie – they’re deciding to play the football because they can wear shorts. So, you actually could be losing younger girls because they don’t have the choice to wear shorts.
“So, this debate has to be spoken about because we can’t let that continue, es
pecially since it’s another three years before they can vote on it.
“It’s very frustrating why that motion wasn’t passed. I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t allow people have the choice.”
[ Skorts: What are they and why are we suddenly talking about them? ]
Gannon says there was a ballot among the Dublin players beforehand to demonstrate how they would like their county board delegation to vote at Congress.
“There was a vote; shorts or skorts or a choice, what do you think? Everyone apart from one player voted for shorts, the other player voted that there should be a choice.
“Our delegate would have been taking that on board. So, I’m not sure what happened with the other counties or where the vote didn’t get passed.
“Definitely from our point of view, it was very clear that a choice should at least be given.”
On the night of the camogie league finals, the matter formed a discussion segment during The Sunday Game on RTÉ.
“It is good that it was spoken about on The Sunday Game and it needs to be spoken about, but it’s also taking away from the three good league finals that they wanted to discuss as well,” added Gannon.
“We don’t want to take away from the matches, but it’s just very disappointing that this decision has been made.”
Gannon was speaking at an event promoting Staycity Aparthotels as sponsors of Dublin in all four Gaelic games codes for the next five years.
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