By Sabrina Sweeney
“Act first, apologise later” is a phrase I associate with the police detective Harry Bosch in Michael Connelly’s best selling series, which I can confess to having binge-watched in a dangerously short amount of time.
For anyone not familiar, Bosch is the tenacious type who’s known for breaking a few rules if it means taking a stand for what’s right and just.
I was reminded of the sentiment last weekend, but it was after a camogie match rather than reading crime fiction. At a National League play-off match in County Clare, the Dublin and Kilkenny teams walked onto the pitch wearing shorts instead of the skort – a sort of hybrid shorts and skirt combo – that they’re supposed to wear.
It wasn’t a flashy or loud protest, just a collective of women working together to challenge the outdated rule requiring them to wear a skort and call for the freedom to choose more practical and comfortable playing gear.
For a moment, it seemed the match would go ahead as normal. But then officials intervened, told them it wouldn’t proceed unless they went back and changed. And so they did.
It should never have come to that. Why on earth should a woman need to protest to be allowed to wear what she’s comfortable in to play sport? It’s beyond sad that this is where we are in 2025, where there’s a room somewhere full of decision-makers saying camogie players must wear a specific garment, not because it helps them play better, or keeps them safer, but because that’s the way it’s always been.
The thing is though rules do change. Sport evolves. Jerseys modernise. Boots improve. So why is this the hill the Camogie Association wants to stand on?
A recent GPA survey showed that 70 per cent of intercounty camogie players find skorts uncomfortable. And 83 per cent, a staggering majority, want the option of wearing shorts. They’re not asking to wear tracksuit bottoms or bring glitter to the sideline. They’re asking for basic comfort. The sort of thing no male player ever has to think twice about.
When the game was stopped last weekend, Dublin captain Aisling Maher called it a “career low.” I can imagine it was.
The message the players received wasn’t: we hear you. It was: get back in line.
Here in Donegal, the challenges of keeping girls engaged in sport are well established. Natasha Kelly, an athlete and former Finn Valley AC coach, has spoken candidly about how she was often the only woman competing at events and how that kind of isolation can chip away at a young athlete’s confidence.
“If she can’t see it, she can’t be it,” she said, and she’s right. If girls don’t feel seen, valued or comfortable – physically and emotionally – why would they stay?
That’s what makes this skort debacle feel so tone-deaf. The people who say it’s just about a rule are missing the bigger picture. They’re not seeing the 14-year-old in Carndonagh or Dungloe who’s wondering why she’s expected to play in a uniform that doesn’t feel right on her.
To make matters worse the Camogie Association now says they’ll trial “more comfortable skort designs” as though the issue is that they just haven’t found the right skort yet. Can’t they see the horse has already bolted and kicked down the gate?
When there’s a sport that’s thriving, risking it all for the sake of holding a line that no longer makes sense has echoes of other moments in Irish life when rules were enforced simply because that’s how it had always been done.
In the end, the players on the pitch in Clare did what they were told. They changed. They played. But they also relit a fuse and this time it feels like there’s no going back.
Act first, apologise later? Not for a pair of shorts and certainly not in this day and age.
Sabrina Sweeney’s ‘Fresh Take’ column features every Thursday in the Donegal News
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