This has been a week of intense pressure on the Camogie Association over its rules on playing equipment. Skorts are an anachronism that most players do not want to wear, but they have survived several attempts at Congress to be made voluntary rather than mandatory.
Yesterday, it was announced that an extraordinary congress would be held later this month to debate the subject and put it to a vote once more.
That is a technical issue. In reality, the day of the skort is done.
Last weekend, Dublin and Kilkenny set the touchpaper but were forced to change. Cork and Waterford, this weekend in the Munster Final, will play in shorts, as did pretty much every club in Dublin during League games this week, and probably around the country as well. The world kept turning.
Sports administration can be tough. It is the essential mechanism for ensuring that sport is organised and played.
Without it, there would be no sport, but it rarely seeks or garners praise for its work, often done in a voluntary capacity.
When things go wrong, though, the same people who enable sport become the devil incarnate. Social media lights up, politicians and the commentariat get very agitated. Some politicians wear shorts to the Oireachtas to stand in solidarity.
Within 24 hours of last weekend’s stance, the sport and the players had worked out an Irish solution to a peculiarly Irish problem.
Blind eyes were turned to those league games in Dublin; no instruction was possible to break the rule, but accommodation was made so no punitive action would be taken when it was.
A survey has gone out to every club and every player, in Dublin at least, to seek a mandate for change at the Congress. It is hard to imagine that the result will be anything other than a change to the rule book and a passing on of different ways we can all temporarily become enraged.
For those of us who coach or support the sport and for all those who play, the games will continue this weekend, next week, and in the months and years ahead.
Perhaps some who have been so quick to adopt the sport we have been engaged in for years will come along and watch a game for the speed and the skill rather than the skorts or the shorts over this same timeline.
This was something rooted in history but no longer relevant in the modern world. It took a group of players to take a stand to force it once more into the spotlight and to effect the steps toward change.
That’s a good thing, and credit to the players. But when things have calmed down, there may also be some credit given to the administrators who might have needed a jolt but have at least acted in the right way and will continue to keep the wheels moving so that the sport can be played and enjoyed in all its brilliance.
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