NEWS of the Camogie Association’s decision to scrap the 2020 minor championship was widely criticised across the country with players and officials coming out against the move.
Following the Limerick Minor team’s petition to the Camogie Association calling for a reversal of the decision, Limerick Camogie Board have now rowed in four square behind the players.
The following supporting letter has been sent to Croke Park from the Board calling for the competition to be rescheduled.
A chairde,
We in Limerick Camogie are very disappointed that the Camogie Association have decided not to complete the Minor Championship this year.In 2019,Limerick Camogie started our Underage Academy.
This proved to be very worthwhile for all our underage County squads from U14 right up to Minor level. In Autumn 2019 the County Board sat and discussed how we could improve things even more for these squads.
We introduced the academy of Athletic Development under the direction of Keith Hennessy, where all our County squads were given a Strength & Conditioning plan.Our minors were our first team back in training in November.
The players and parents attended a meeting where they were given a Strength & Conditioning programme to run alongside their Minor training schedule. They all ‘bought into’ this initiative and under the supervision of their parents these players were filling the apps daily while doing their S & C programmes.
They attended training 3 to 4 times a week while continuing with the S & C programmes. They took a very short break for Christmas and continued to train through a busy Leaving Cert / Pre Leaving exams schedule.
All parents, players and minor management have given up countless hours in a bid to progress in the 2020 Minor Championship.They trained right through the Winter in all weather conditions.
For their first Championship match, they travelled half way to Kildare, before the decision was taken that the match had to be cancelled due to horrendous wind and rain. Their matches on the next 2 weekends were also cancelled due to storms.
These girls only got to play one Championship match after all the effort they had put in. The last few months has been a very stressful time for everybody but especially for these players. Their school year finished on 12th March, they spent weeks worrying about their Leaving Cert only to have that taken from them, they have missed their debs balls, their Graduations.
This age group have lost out on a lot this year but during this time they had hoped for the chance to return to finish this competition. During lockdown the girls continued to train at home, working on their own with the hope that they would get to play the remaining games in their Championship.
We were all delighted when we realised that we will have an opportunity to get back playing sport, and now once again this year these players are left disappointed.2020 was dedicated to Women in sport.
The motto for this year was – if she can’t see it, she can’t be it. We in Limerick had planned to provide progression for our teams in 2020. We were very disheartened and disappointed last Tuesday night that a decision had been made not to complete the Minor championship.
We feel that in order to keep these girls playing Camogie, you need to reverse the decision and allow this competition to finish even if it has to be done in a different format. One of the reasons given was that you did not want Minor girls travelling to other counties, yet they will be expected to travel if they are on the adult county teams.
As a County, we stand united with our Minor players and we hope to see all our teams competing in National Championship this year . We can’t understand how a competition that has already started, cannot be finished. They always felt they would be given the opportunity to complete this competition.I look forward to your reply.
Limerick Camogie Statement
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