Gaelic Football: Letter from Dublin - A Gaelic games revolution

DO NOT hold your breath for a similar revolution at Wembley or Twickenham, but, with very few fanfares over in Ireland, women's contests have crept on to the same match programme as men's games in key inter- county Gaelic football battles.

This is the latest success in the onward progress of the rough and tumble of women's Gaelic football, now the fastest-growing game in the country. A sort of high-speed cross between handball and rugby, played with a round ball, its rise has surprised many who considered it too rough to attract mass female interest. How wrong they were.

Live television coverage now follows All-Ireland women's county finals. Such was the excitement over 1997's epic Monaghan v Waterford contest that audience figures nearly doubled for the replay, adding an extra 100,000 viewers, on top of another 20,000 at the ground.

Breaking Ball, RTE television's Gaelic sport magazine programme, is monitoring Meath's ambitious women's squad's. Up to 11 minutes on Match of the Day's Gaelic games' counterpart is now devoted to the best women's games. Over the border UTV closely follow Tyrone, this year's hot tip for the women's All-Ireland.

Helen O'Rourke, the game's national secretary and first full-time officer, says "I think we're living in a culture now where women tend to get more involved in sports. There are very few team sports out there for women that will take 15 a side. They've been following the GAA [Gaelic Athletic Association] but there has never been anything for them to be part of."

O'Rourke believes football has grown faster than camogie (women's hurling) because it is seen as safer, and its mix of handling and running skills easier to learn. "For teachers you can just send them off with a football and they needn't know an awful lot about it. Not a lot of damage can be done."

Rib-cracking shoulder charges are theoretically barred under women's rules, though the arrival of coaches of both sexes from the men's game has put grit into some teams, noticeably short on shrinking violets.

Barring heavy tackling has prevented the indiscriminate guerilla warfare that sparks fisticuffs between men's teams, most famously between Meath and Dublin in the 1996 All-Ireland, and at local level in a recent jaw- shattering bust-up in the tunnel at a Westmeath v Wicklow tie in Athlone.

"Blocking down, or intercepting a ball as players kick it, then becomes a key skill in the women's game," Finbarr O'Driscoll, a senior referee and pro for the women's association observes. To his relief no referee in a female match has had to endure being punched or locked in a car boot, as has happened in men's games.

The decisive catalyst, he believes, has been school's backing. In Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal, the three Ulster counties in the Irish Republic, 34 out of 39 girls secondary schools have chosen Gaelic football as their year-round team sport.

In the south, in Munster, 66 schools out of 187 now play; 29 out of 100 in the western Connacht region; and 105 of 302 in Leinster in the east. There are 70,000 registered women players in clubs nationally, three times the total of five years ago. More coaches, female and male, are also helping win recruits.

The economic boom has allowed some women to stay who might previously have emigrated. Match programmes reveal disparate backgrounds, from hairdressers, shop assistants and factory workers to civil engineers, trainee accountants and the largest group, students.

All has changed from 30 years ago when Ireland's Ayatollah, the late Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, outlawed women's sports in schools run by religious orders, which then meant almost all.

McQuaid tried to run Ireland as a theocracy, brow-beating cabinets, intervening in every area of life, from education to health, to impose a narrow Catholic dogma. His move to block a 1950's soccer match between Ireland and Yugoslavia (he objected to Tito's attitude to Yugoslav bishops) provoked an unprecedented demonstration by 20,000 Dubliners against Church interference.

McQuaid was apparently anguished over whether convent school teams might have to share showers with Protestant girls, declaring it was well known they bathed in the nude. He blocked Irish women's teams from international competitions, fearing they might be seen getting changed at foreign venues. His 1949 Lenten pastoral letter damned women's sports as "unbecoming."

The history seems comical, but the effect was devastating. After McQuaid's death in 1973 little female team sport remained. The legacy led to the last Irish government in 1997 holding an inquiry into low levels of female participation in sport.

The GAA had long seemed a predominantly male affair. Yet, with its clubs, the main focus of many rural communities, it remains arguably Ireland's primary cultural body. Within it, women were often actively involved off the pitch, and not simply making the tea. Donegal has long had a powerful woman county secretary.

Since 1974, the women's game has been run by Cumann Peile Gael na mBan (the Ladies Gaelic Football Association), recognised by the GAA structure, but not formally controlled by it. This year they brought in time-keepers for injury time, ahead of the men.

For women's footballers today, the future is theirs. Moves are afoot to strengthen links with clubs on the United States' east coast and in Australia. Money and sponsorship permitting, it is also aiming to bring London's clubs into the domestic Irish competitions.