This article is from page 67 of the 2007-11-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 67 JPG
IN THE past few years, camogie has become of the fastest growing sports in the county. The successful influence of the county junior side has contributed largely to this re- surgence as has the increasing pro- motion at ground level. In addition, this expanding interest in the sport has commanded greater exposure 1n the national media which in turn has further developed the sport’s profile. Better standards of coaching, facili- ties and personnel has also meant that the county has enjoyed great success at underage levels in recent years.
In order to hone this interest and progress Clare camogie to the next level, an open forum entitled “To- gether, Raising the Banner’ will take place in the Auburn Lodge Hotel this Saturday from llam to 3pm. The brainchild of Clare Junior captain and Munster Camogie Development Co-ordinator Deirdre Murphy, this exclusive forum which is open to all who are interested, is the most am- bitious and far reaching conference ever to be held in the county and boasts a star-studded line-up of GAA and camogie people which is sure to attract a large attendence. Among the speakers on the day are Donal O’Grady, an All-Ireland winning player and manager with Cork; Cyril Farrell who managed both Galway’s
hurlers and camogie players to All- Ireland success; Pat Fitzgerald, Sec- retary of the Clare County Board, Emily Hayden, a current member of the Tipperary senior camogie team and five time All-Ireland winner; Stella Sinnott, manager of this year’s All-Ireland champions Wexford and Mary O’Connor, National director of Camogie.
“The line up is really special” ad- mits All-Star nominee Deirdre Mur- phy, “What I hope will come out of the day really is that from listening to these speakers and being able to
have a questions and answers ses- sion, there should be a lot of valu- able information but also getting all of the people involved in Clare camogie and the people involved in Clare GAA into the one meeting in a proactive and vibrant setting, you would hope for clubs that it would in- crease the numbers of volunteers they would have working within their club structure and that it would develop a much more positive attitude towards camogie throughout the county and a proactive attitude I suppose.”
A qualified secondary school
teacher, Deirdre took the job as Mun- ster Camogie Development Officer at the beginning of the summer and after experiencing the varying levels of camogie in her role as a promoter of the game, she is certainly the best person to assess where Clare cam- ogie lies on the national map.
‘The standard of camogie amongst the strong counties has really, re- ally improved. The likes of Cork and Wexford that were playing in the senior final with the preparation and the work and the stardard that they can produce is just fantastic. But I suppose on the other hand, you have counties like maybe Water- ford, Kerry, Carlow and Wicklow where it’s a real struggle to try and give camogie a foothold once again. I think there has become a very big gap between strong and weak and I think in Clare we are somewhere in the middle of that gap and whether we move forward and close that gap and once again become one of the strong camogie counties or we are happy to remain a competitive jun- ior county which isn’t enough in my opinion. We should be there in a cou- ple of years time strongly challeng- ing for senior honours would be what I would hope that would happen in Clare in the next few years.”