The weekend’s two doubleheader games at Croke Park attracted attendances of 59,739 on Saturday and 48,360 on Sunday.
This was around eight percent ahead of what would have been considered a good turnout, and a positive indicator given that both of the Hurling Semi-Finals between Limerick and Galway on Saturday and between Kilkenny and Clare on Sunday were seen as being competitive and were televised live on RTÉ.
They were backed up by two Glen Dimplex All Ireland Camogie Championship Quarter-Finals between Tipperary and Antrim on Saturday and then Kilkenny and Cork in a repeat of last year’s final on the Sunday.
The Camogie Association did everything in its power to promote the games, and securing broadcast coverage at this stage of the competition is a win for the sport and the sponsors, but the number of fans who were in the ground for the matches must have been disappointing.
Women’s sport has come on so far in the past decade and will continue to do so but there is something of a gap in terms of the number of people coming along to the games.
Tallaght Stadium set a new record of just under 8,000 fans for the Republic of Ireland World Cup send-off against France last week. This was backed up by significant media interest, extensive advertising by team sponsors Sky and Cadbury, well advertised live coverage and build-up on RTÉ and more but the reality is that if this were the Men’s team it would have attracted closer to 50,000 at the Aviva Stadium.
Being a natural optimist, perhaps it might have been the same for the women in the larger venue, and we will get a chance to gauge that in September when the Women’s team plays their first match there against Northern Ireland in the UEFA Nations League.
Across Britain and the world, the tipping point has passed with a significant uplift in live attendance for the Women’s Super League and international games.
In 2019, an attendance of 56,114 pitched up at Croke Park for the TG4 All Ireland Ladies Football Final. At the time we wrote that “The comparison to the attendance at the Men’s Final shows that the gap between the two is shrinking at a rapid rate. Since Croke Park opened the final phase of its redevelopment in 2005, every Men’s final has attracted a capacity crowd of over 82,000. The attendance at the Ladies Final that year between Cork and Galway was 23,358.”
Flashback: Ladies Football Attendance in Perspective from September 2019
Covid stopped the pace of momentum but the hope is that this year will see it rekindled for both the Camogie and the Ladies Football All Irelands.
But they have to be built on a solid base and for all the well-meaning social media encouragement and cheerleading for Women’s sport, the numbers who are coming to the games in the earlier stages of the Championships are poor.
There is no number of the fans that were there for the Camogie at the weekend but the photographs above, taken of the Hogan Stand and Hill 16 during the second half of the Camogie on Saturday and the first half of the hurling tell a tale.
Camogie and Hurling draw from an impassioned base of supporters and players. There are over 100,000 registered members of the Camogie Association and there is a deep love of the game, without a doubt.
But we really need to turn up more for the players, the sport, the administrators and the broadcasters who have the confidence and are willing to give the backing but must have been wondering as we were where the fans were.
There are any number of reasons that can be put forward, that the tickets were more expensive than a normal inter-county game, that it was too much travelling to Dublin, that it is the holiday season, that it would have been too late getting home after the hurling game, that sure it was on the TV anyway.
But this is our sport being played at the very highest level, in a stadium that would be fit for the biggest sporting occasions in the world.
Nobody can get to every game, but if we can’t raise ourselves to get to the ground and experience it live on the big occasions, that really is a slap in the face for all the effort that is going in across so many different levels.
