Butler welcomes change to camogie season – plus increased funding

“Common sense prevailed in the end,” says Leah Butler, the Dublin camogie player straight up with that answer, before gently clarifying the question: “What, the news of the split season or (the additional) grant?”

It was a good week on both fronts – beginning on Monday with Government’s intention to increase dramatically the amount of grants for women’s Gaelic games, Minister of State for Sport Jack Chambers making the announcement in an interview on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne.

Then on Tuesday, the Camogie Association confirmed this year’s intercounty championship will be played after the national leagues , following a poll of clubs that returned a slim vote in favour of a change to the original plans.

“Yeah, thank God they [our voices] were listened to, eventually,” says Butler, readdressing that split-season matter at a Dublin AIG event.

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“I’m just so happy the clubs voted in favour for what we were looking for, the split season. It would have been madness to go with the complete opposite to all the other codes, so I don’t even know where that came from. It’s better for all players, I think anyway, for player welfare, and clubs players, and club players, so I’m delighted.”

Chambers had been asked about the disparity in funding for the men’s and women’s games, which was highlighted in ‘Levelling the Field: The Next Steps in Intercounty Female Gaelic Games,’ a report by the Women’s Gaelic Players Association, which has since merged with the Gaelic Players Association.

Recommendation four was, “Strive for equitable funding and investment for intercounty female players”.

The report pointed out that male players “receive over four times more government funding than female players per year, €3 million compared to €0.7 million in 2019”.

Asked was this the time to address that, the Minister said that it was and highlighted the discrepancy between the average grant to men and women.

Butler is equally welcoming on that decision: “It’s absolutely huge, amazing progress to be honest. We’ve never had this much respect shown to us, really, the way we had the WGPA helping to get that decision, we have the voices being listened to.

“With the grants, that’s a long time coming, it’s 2021 it should be in place by now, and we’re so, so grateful that it is equal funding, because it was needed, and it was right. It was just the basic things, it was so normal for them to get the additional support, whereas for us we had to pay a lot to just actually play for our county.”