Camogie president seeks long term Féile benefit

CAMOGIE Association president Joan O’Flynn believes that the benefit to Clare of hosting Féile will be manifold and not just on the camogie, hurling or handball front.
The Kildare-based Cork woman, who is in her second year as national president, maintains that Clare will receive a significant economic boost next month, when up to 5,000 visitors come to the county for Féile weekend (June 18 to 20).
“You’ve over 3,000 children participating in the parade and hundreds of families and supporters coming to visit Clare for a couple of days. So it’s a big shot in the arm for the local services sector in particular. It’s important to say that as well because sometimes the economic contribution of sport gets a little bit overlooked,” O’Flynn told The Clare Champion this week.
Economics aside the Féile focus will be on what happens between the white lines. This week Joan O’Flynn was part of a combined GAA and camogie troupe that visited 70 Clare primary schools to market the arrival of Féile in the county.
A civil servant in the social inclusion division of the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, Joan O’Flynn is hugely appreciative of the contribution primary school teachers make to the development of camogie.
“In all the classrooms the colour was brilliant. All the kids were wearing the club jersey or the Clare jersey and some kids were wearing other counties jerseys as well. But the dominant colours were the Clare and the club colours,” she said.
“Lots of kids had done artwork and lots of performance. You’d be very motivated and very energised by the commitment of the teachers to maintaining the culture and making it stronger. That includes the games but also the music and the language, which we heard plenty of as well. It wouldn’t be Clare without lots of Irish music and we heard lots of that,” O’Flynn added.
Camogie players Deirdre Murphy and Fiona Lafferty accompanied the camogie president as did hurlers Cormac O’Donovan and Colin Lynch.
“It’s important for kids to see female Gaelic players and to understand that Clare won a camogie All-Ireland in 2007. The camogie players have won All-Ireland medals in exactly the same way as the U-21 hurlers did last year. From a camogie point of view it’s a great opportunity to profile the young stars in Clare,” she said, noting that there are 26 camogie clubs in the county.
While participating teams would love to win a Féile title, O’Flynn feels that the long-term gains for camogie and hurling are huge.
“There is no point in saying there isn’t a competitiveness to Féile. There is. But more broadly the ethos is one of fun, participation and friendship as well. I think that’s the whole benefit of visiting teams coming to your county. You start to establish new friendships with players and clubs from different counties. Those friendships continue long after Féile,” she said.
“It really energises a club to be either competing to qualify for Féile and then equally if you are hosting it to put the best side of your club out for the weekend. It tends to bring in a lot of parents as well who may have had a peripheral involvement before. It brings them into the club because there’s loads of jobs to be done when Féile comes to visit,” O’Flynn pointed out.
She acknowledged tho-ugh that Féile could be the last seen of some players if their interest dwindles.
“Sometimes there’s maybe a slight risk that it can become the climax of an under age players’ career. It’s a step along the journey really in terms of a players development is what I would say. Part of the legacy of it should be that kids maintain their enthusiasm for the game.”
On a broader note part of the Camogie Association’s 2010-2015 development plan, entitled Our Game, Our Passion, is to help the sport to develop internationally.
Having lived and worked in London for a decade, Joan O’Flynn is very keen to advance this element of the organisations strategic plan.
“I spent ten years in London so I’d be quite keen about supporting the development of camogie overseas. The geography of trying to develop the game in a place like London or New York is very difficult,” she said.
Whether it is in Clare, across Ireland or overseas, O’Flynn wants to significantly increase playing numbers. There are 800,000 girls under 20 in Ireland in 2010 and 391,000 aged five to 15.
Only a fraction of them play competitive sport however, and a fraction of that figure play camogie.
“One of the things that drives me is the fact that women are underrepresented in sport. Thousands of girls tog out for camogie every weekend. But that’s only a fraction of the number of young people who play sport. There’s far more boys togging out,” she noted.
Next month more than 1,000 girls will hurl their hearts out for the weekend in Clare. If Joan O’Flynn’s vision comes to fruition Féile will represent the start and not the highlight of their camogie careers.