Róisín Ingle on . . . losing my GAA virginity

I am probably the person least qualified to write about the GAA. So obviously that’s exactly what I’m about to do. I’m not proud of my ignorance of all matters relating to our national sporting heritage. I blame my mother. (She comes in very handy like that.)

She’s English you see. And not at all sports minded. These two facts combined to contribute to my ignorance. As a teenager I could have told you more about curling than about hurling or football or camogie. At secondary school it was all hockey or basketball and I had as little to do with both as possible. I was good at rounders, mind you and I was the 1985 Swing Ball Champion of Scoil na nÓg Irish College in Glanmire, Co Cork (they can’t take that away from me).

Then some years ago I moved to within a 15 minute walk of Croke Park. So obviously everything changed utterly and forever. Well, no actually. Everything stayed exactly the same except for the fact that I had a new awareness of the sport.

Every so often at certain times of the year, our street would get clogged with cars and so I knew something big was happening in Croker. The car owners would come back to our street in the late afternoon, some of them happy some of them less so, and disappear again. I’d think no more about it until the next time we couldn’t get a parking space on the street. Except for that one time Dublin beat the rest of Ireland at which point my GAA ambivalence left me for a few proud days.

And then one day not long ago my daughter started talking about hurling. A match had accidentally appeared on the RTÉ player on the laptop showing highlights of the hurling final. She was transfixed. She became like all those English people who were after seeing hurling for the first time on Sky. She wouldn’t shut up. It was hurling this and hurling that.

One day she fixed me with those big blue eyes and said: “Mama, I insist you take me forthwith to one of those hurling matches. I do not wish to inhabit the sporting and cultural wasteland you seem to have happily traversed for two score years and more.” Or to be more succinct: “The hurling. Take me. Nowwwww”. The next day happened to be the Liberty Insurance All-Ireland Senior Camogie final between Cork and Kilkenny. At first the five-year-old was deeply suspicious of my explanation that camogie was “hurling, but for women”. After a quick hoke around on the internet, I said: “They use a camog to hit the, er, sliotar, see, so it’s camogie”. “What do the hurling people use?” “Eh, camans”. “Why isn’t it called Camanie?” I located an ice-cream van which soon put a stop to the awkward questions.And so it came to pass that, lo, on a sunny, Sunday afternoon I walked into Croke Park with my daughter to attend our first ever GAA match.

Some observations:

* The stadium was really empty. It seemed the biggest day out in the camogie calendar could only attract a crowd of just under 12,500 compared to the 82,000 for the men’s finals. Sad but true.

* It was brilliantly noisy. “Why are they all shouting?” said hurling’s newest fan. “Because they are passionate about who is going win,” I answered expertly. Then we both started shouting. This was fun.

* Mostly, it was her shouting: “Kilkenny has it! No Cork has it! No Kilkenny has it again! No Cork has it now!”every two seconds. And I thought swingball was fast.

* The young spectator beside us was very helpful. She seemed to know everyone on the pitch by their first names. She was shouting “How many steps?” and “Get it back, Jessica!” and “nooooooo!” a lot especially in the second half. She was a Kilkenny supporter.

* We were Kilkenny supporters too. This had been decided when they went ahead in the first half. Then Cork went one point ahead in the second half. “I’m for Cork now,” said my fickle camogie cailín.

* Camogie players are warriors. Fearless and strong and – horribly overused but appropriate here, word alert – awesome. Kilkenny lost but they were incredible. Cork won and team captain Anna Geary (who also happened to be the Cork Rose) made a speech so generous and impassioned that I got a bit emotional. Over a camogie match.

I believe there is another match on in Croke Park today. But those lads already have all the support they could possibly need. I’ve been telling all the GAA virgins I know to bring their children to see these female warriors play. Take it from this convert and her five-year-old daughter: everything about it is awesome.

roisin@irishtimes.com