Cork's Amy O’Connor admits that camogie is in a better place following her criticism of the sport earlier this year.
The 2018 All-Ireland final, in which Cork beat Kilkenny, was widely panned as a spectacle amid claims that the rules of the game needed to be aligned more with hurling.
O’Connor said last January that camogie was “boring to watch” and “boring to play” and, though Cork weren’t involved in this year’s final, she felt the showpiece was vastly improved.
“Things have changed, yeah,” she said. “It may have sounded that I was being very negative with the press and stuff – but it was never my intention to go out and be controversial, it was never my intention to go out and be very negative about the sport because I think it’s the best sport in the world.
“I just think that things can be done to promote it and to make it a much better sport. We can make it like hurling, we can make people excited to go to games, because at the end of the day people go to matches to be excited – they want to see all the tricks, all the flicks, like you see in hurling.
“They want to see a free-flowing game, that’s what it was about for me, it wasn’t about slating.
“I never slated the refs because I never blamed them for one second, I never slated the association or anything, I just said something that I think can help us make our sport a better sport, and get more people involved in our sport, get more people wanting to go to our matches because that’s what we need to do, we need to bring the attendances up, get more people involved, more sponsorship involved.”
On that note, O’Connor was speaking at the announcement that Littlewoods Ireland is to continue as sponsor of the Camogie League and the All-Ireland SHC for a further three years.
“Littlewoods is such a big brand, getting them involved was huge for camogie and it has come on leaps and bounds in that time-frame since they got involved.
“And to be fair, the All-Ireland final this year, as hard as it was for me to watch it, it was exciting, it was a good game, it was open, there were goals, and that’s all people want to see.”
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