Striving for better conditions off the field and aiming to put together a consistent run of form on the field is the goal this year for Maire McGrath.
Only the third ever camogie All-Star in the County, Cratloe’s McGrath says Clare need to be more consistent in this year’s Championship. “What we need to work on now is stringing a few wins together, we’re very good at winning the odd game here and there and taking the odd scalp of a big team but going forward as I said we’ve five games in a row, we need to win at least four or five them so that means we need to bring the momentum on from the very first game where hopefully we’ll take Offaly here at home and then work our way from there.”
A trainee Garda, Maire and her teammates are looking forward to June 18th when their All-Ireland campaign commences against Offaly. The games will be coming thick and fast after that with one encounter every weekend.
McGrath feels that cramming the games into five weeks isn’t the best solution. “When you look at the structure I think the Central Council obviously are trying to give as many games as possible to all the camogie teams but at the end of the day it’s not ideal to be playing five weeks in a row over a summer, people do get tired and they are looking into changing it and maybe seeing what people’s opinions on it are, at the moment it’ll stay the way it is and we can’t really focus on that, we’ve got to focus on winning our games regardless of the structure”.
Every team in the Liberty Insurance All-Ireland Camogie Championship has a shot at winning the title and that’s what makes the competition unique according to the Clare defender. “They’re all tough teams really but I think one thing about the camogie championship that separates it from the hurling is that anyone can really win on any given year. We’ve learned down the last few years that we don’t need to fear anyone, even this year in the League we went down to Wexford and had a fairly comprehensive win down there so I suppose we don’t really fear anyone at the moment”.
Maire’s brother Conor lines out at corner-forward with the Clare Senior Hurlers, having seen the contrast in how both teams are treated, the UL graduate reckons that the hurlers take the little things for granted and is exact in stating that the camogie players deserve more.
“The hurlers get treated a lot differently and from our perspective and I know I’m a rep here for the WGPA, I suppose one thing we’d be looking at in particular is treatments after training, just getting simple things, getting food, getting showers for the girls, the hurlers probably take a lot of that for granted and it’s something we’re working on but look it’s a work in progress and hopefully as the year’s pass we can get better treatment for our players”.
As a Clare representative on the Women’s Gaelic Players Association, Maire tells The Clare Herald what the organisation is trying to do for players. “I suppose get better welfare for the players is the main thing, we’re not looking for any drastic changes or anything like that and we’re not looking for any player power. We literally want to make lives of camogie and ladies footballers easier and I know Aoife Lane, Gemma Begley and Deirdre Murphy are all doing an amazing job and getting money for us and getting funding and putting that to good use is the main objective for the next couple of years.”