There were choice words this week from former Kerry footballer and clothing designer, Paul Galvin. “Hard to believe it’s not an episode of Father Ted,” he tweeted as tradition butted heads with progress and the skort war rumbled on.
Galvin was bemused that we had somehow arrived at a point in 2025, where camogie players are fighting for comfort and performance in a pair of shorts. The Camogie Association has announced a special congress for May 22nd to vote on the issue.
It is not the first time attire has become the story in women’s sport, or the only occasion officials have tried to stop athletes choosing what to wear.
More than a decade ago, in the run up to the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Katie Taylor was told by the lads who ran boxing that there was a nice skirt waiting for her in the locker room. Katie had different ideas. By the start of 2012, she had won three successive World Championships and five successive European Championships.
Taylor was adamant that no boxing official anywhere on the planet was going to make her perform at that year’s World Championships or Olympic Games in a skirt.
The gloves were off and the International Boxing Association (then known as the AIBA), not unlike the Camogie Association this week, were on the ropes.
“When I’m in the ring, I want the focus to be on my boxing, not what I’m wearing. It’s a big no from me,” she said to Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show.
“I don’t even wear mini skirts on a night out,” she said in the London Independent. And that was that.
In the end, boxing saw sense and gave athletes the choice of a skirt or shorts. But battles over clothing, primarily relating to women, is a well-worn path.
In 2004 Sepp Blatter, then president of world football’s governing body Fifa, suggested that women players wear skimpier kits to raise the profile of their game. He helpfully suggested: “They could, for example, have tighter shorts.”
Long shorts were more restrictive, short shorts too revealing
“Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball,” added the Fifa chief.
In 2011, the odour of Blatter’s views had barely cleared when the Badminton World Federation (BWF) attempted to order women to wear skirts on court to revive flagging interest as the 2012 Olympics approached. The rule was roundly condemned as sexist, a hindrance to performance and offensive to Muslim women who play the sport in large numbers in Asian countries.
“We just want them (women players) to look feminine,” said BWF deputy president Paisan Rangsikitpho, falling into the common trap of not bothering to consult the athletes expected to wear the gear. The BWF’s dress-code regulation was later shelved.
The European Handball Federation also wanted to make their athletes look extra feminine. Four years ago, the Norway women’s beach handball team was fined after players wore shorts instead of the required bikini bottoms during a game.
According to the International Handball Federation, women were required to wear bikini bottoms “with a close fit and cut on an upward angle toward the top of the leg”. The sides of the bikini bottoms, they declared, must be no more than four inches.
Men, on the other hand, were allowed to wear shorts as long as four inches above their knees once they were “not too baggy”.
Each female Norwegian player was fined €150 for their transgression.
Until 2024, female Olympic volleyball athletes were required to either wear a one-piece or a top and briefs.
Fabric in the bottoms could not be longer than 7cm on each side. But those rules, after advocacy from the athletes, were torn up. At the Paris Games in 2024, the volleyball athletes were allowed, for the first time, to ditch their bikini bottoms. Most of them did just that.
They say every crisis creates an opportunity and the Camogie Association might want to grasp this as one and make change. Perhaps cast an eye towards women’s soccer.
Gone are the days of men’s hand-me-downs. Prior to the 2019 Women’s World Cup, Nike spearheaded the design and production of the first bespoke women’s kit.
Cassie Looker, who headed the scheme, found that as women are a different shape to men, they had different preferences. As professional soccer players, who generate so much power through their lower bodies, they had well-developed glutes, thighs and hamstrings and the designs accommodated that.
Long shorts were more restrictive, short shorts too revealing. The women preferred crew necks to shirts with a deep V. The kits and fabric were created and designed for a “body in motion”, with dynamic female athletes in mind.
But here we are now, still closer to the badminton and boxing mindsets of pre-2012 than the soccer one of 2019. Intercounty level camogie players at war with their association because they want to feel comfortable, covered and perform without distraction. Right Ted.
