Denis Walsh: Camogie players are right to protest about skorts - it’s scandalous they still need to

Last month Tess Howard was awarded an MBE for “services to inclusive sportswear for women and girls”. Howard is a British international hockey player who assumed an advocacy role on an issue that shouldn’t need advocates. In 2023, she persuaded her own federation and the International Hockey Federation to give its athletes a choice between skirts, shorts or skorts, as they saw fit.

“It’s quite ridiculous,” she said, “that I’ve been given an award essentially for campaigning to wear shorts. It’s silly when you say it out loud. My slogan is ‘Let’s fix this and get on with our lives’.”

The research that underpinned her campaign was Howard’s own work for an undergraduate dissertation at Durham University. In a survey of more than 400 women, 70 per cent of the respondents said that “kit and body image issues” were their main reasons for dropping out of sport.

The tipping point for Howard came when Team GB ordered new kit, without consulting the athletes. It comprised of a compression tank top and skorts. “I felt so unconfident wearing it,” she said. “It was awful playing an international match when you’re supposed to be feeling at the top of your game, but the uniform is literally sucking the life out of you.”

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Howard and one of her team-mates surveyed the rest of the squad, asking them if their “performance confidence” would be better if the uniform was changed: 95 per cent of them said it would.

In camogie, this simple, essential issue remains scandalously unresolved. Last week the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) published the outcome of their latest survey of intercounty camogie players. Of 650 respondents 70 per cent said they experienced “discomfort” wearing skorts, while 83 per cent said they should be allowed to choose between skorts and shorts.

The survey highlighted two other headline concerns: 65 per cent of players said that wearing skorts led to them being “exposed” in images shared on social media and 49 per cent said they had “experienced anxiety around period leaks”.

Kilkenny captain Katie Power and Dublin captain Aisling Maher, both in shorts, talk with referee Ray Kelly before Saturday's Leinster senior camogie semi-final. All the players had to change into skorts before the game could start. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

On Saturday, the Kilkenny and Dublin players attempted to make a stand. In a co-ordinated, ambush protest both teams arrived on to the pitch for their Leinster semi-final wearing shorts. The sanction for wearing the wrong gear is a yellow card; the sanction for refusing to change is another yellow.

If both teams had stood their ground, the only option for the referee would have been to abandon the match. He made this clear to the captains before a ball was thrown in. Both teams returned to the dressingroom to change into skorts, although Dublin took five minutes longer to re-emerge.

At the root of this issue are players who feel utterly betrayed by the leadership of their organisation, at local and national level. Two motions to introduce shorts were defeated at last year’s annual camogie congress; one motion to abandon skorts completely was heavily defeated, 64-36; another motion to introduce shorts as an option was beaten by 55 votes to 45.

[ Kilkenny v Dublin Leinster semi-final comes close to being abandoned in skorts controversyOpens in new window ]

This flew in the face of consistent feedback from players in recent years that they wanted the option to wear shorts. “We feel like we’re not being heard,” said the Dublin captain Aisling Maher on Saturday. More than that, they are being ignored.

None of the arguments in favour of skorts are expressed by players, or retired players. It is a rule book imposition, that draws on custom and tradition and a particular vision of femininity. In training, where the obligation to wear skorts doesn’t exist, camogie players universally wear shorts.

A Kilkenny player in her skort during the match against Dublin - the skort has been called 'as redundant and gendered as a pink bow'. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

“I am trying to think of a legitimate argument for skorts,” wrote Eimear Ryan, the former intercounty player and award-winning author of The Grass Ceiling. “Tradition? We are playing a 3,000-year-old game; we don’t lack for that. Femininity? That’s more likely to be expressed on the pitch nowadays with fake tan, threaded brows and floral tattoos than with a pair of togs with a flap sewn on the front.

“It would be different if skorts provided some kind of useful adaptation to women, as in the case of darker-coloured shorts, which have become popular in all codes of women’s team sport. But all the skort does is remind the audience that the wearer is female: it’s as redundant and gendered as a pink bow.”

Grappling with issues around the uniform is not new territory for camogie. Through the decades the playing uniform has been changed according to societal shifts, though these reactions were usually delayed and circumspect.

In the first intercounty championship in 1932 players wore “gym frocks that covered the knee, long black stockings, canvas boots, long-sleeved blouses and a belt or sash around the waist”, as Siobhán Doyle pointed out on RTÉ. Camogie’s first set of codified rules at the beginning of the 20th century stipulated that skirts should be no more than “six inches” off the ground.

Remarkably, the option of wearing shorts or skirts was proposed at Camogie’s annual congress as far back as 1959. In the motion brought by the Cork county board, the trade-off with camogie’s institutional commitment to “modesty” was that players would still wear full length stockings. The motion was defeated by 16 votes to four. A tunic and blouse were retained as the uncomfortable, impractical, buttoned-up, playing uniform.

The Kilkenny team in their shorts before the Leinster senior camogie semi-final against Dublin - they changed to skorts to play the game after every player was booked. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

In other sports, federations have heeded the wishes of their athletes. In 2023 the Irish rugby team started wearing navy shorts to alleviate “period anxieties”. Some intercounty Gaelic football teams have listened to their players and made the same change.

“The top way to ensure we perform at our best on the field is by removing any unnecessary distractions,” said Enya Breen, the Ireland rugby player. “Our hope is that it will help women at all levels of rugby to feel more comfortable on the field.”

As a courtesy, the GPA sent the outcome of its survey to the Camogie Association last week before its findings were published. The Camogie Association didn’t acknowledge receipt of the correspondence, but it is understood that an email was sent to all county boards on Thursday night indicating that a “committee” was looking into the issue of the playing uniform.

Under the Camogie Association’s constitution, the issue cannot be raised at congress again until 2027. That is too late. This change must be made without any further delay.

The players must build on Saturday’s protest. If that means matches being abandoned, so be it. The bolshiness must be escalated. Ignoring the athletes cannot be tolerated for a minute longer.

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