Former Tipperary camogie captain Geraldine Kinane has expressed her disappointment at the outcome of the skorts motion raised at the sport’s annual congress on Saturday.
Camogie players will continue to wear the skort, a pair of shorts with a fabric overlapping panel that resembles a skirt, after congress rejected a motion to change to shorts. The next time delegates can vote on the playing uniform will be at congress in 2027.
Tipperary Camogie had proposed the motion but it did not pas, with 64% voting against the change.
Kinane, now Camogie PRO for the county, has said she was “very surprised” at the defeat of the motion and perhaps “a little naïve”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, she said six Tipperary clubs had sent in the motion at its AGM and there was unanimous support for the change.
“At AGM, there can be a lot of debate and arguments, but everybody was unanimous,” she said.
“All 39 clubs were in favour of this and those are great buzz that change was on the way. There’s been a lot of positive developments in camogie in recent years.
“Integration [with the GAA] is on the horizon and I suppose we thought 150 years’ anniversary of the association that now is the time to get rid of skorts, replace them with shorts. They are much more comfortable for players.
“The research is there that this is what players wanted and we were just so surprised and disappointed that it was so well defeated.”
“At congress, you had about 150 delegates are thereabouts, and they’re from the counties, and they’re from the provincial councils. And they’re from the international units as.
Kinane explained that those that have a vote at congress are from all the different provincial councils and the county boards and delegates from higher education, international boards, past presidents.
“The idea and what we do in Tipperary is we vote based on what our clubs and our players wanted and I feel that if you surveyed all the players, especially with say age 15 upwards where skorts become an issue with body image and things like that if you survey all the players that shorts would win hands down,” she added. “There’s no way in my opinion that 64% would want to keep skort. I feel like delegates weren’t voting for what players wanted.”
Kinane said that some delegates spoke up and said they had survey their players but she feels that they asked younger players under 12 who may favour a skort whereas older players by far prefer shorts.
“But as we all know we’ve seen the ads on telly, one in five people drop out of sports from primary to secondary school. 45% of girls stopped playing by 14 people due to body confidence.
Kinane added that they had clubs putting this motion forward last year and they were told that they had to wait until now.
“I honestly don’t understand it and there’s so many reasons why people don’t like them, they’re uncomfortable.”
“In challenge matches, girls wear shorts in trainings, they wear shorts. But in most matches they will wear the shorts as that is uniform they wear the skort.”
