Women In Sport
Women in sport is probably the hottest topic in sport at the moment. After Katie Taylor in 2012 and the Irish women’s rugby team success in 2013. Ireland has always had a habit of producing top quality Female sports stars, Sonia O Sullivan, Katharina Mc Kiernan to name just two. Along with that Ireland has produced some top notch Football stars as well namely Emma Byrne and Ciara Grant.
In the last number of weeks numerous people have questioned whether the recent success by the Women’s rugby team in France at the World Cup will be capitalised on or will it just be another flash in the pan!! Again a number of people have said that the following for women’s sports will fall away after the hype has died down. This can not be helped if it does happen, but having spent a week at the recent World Cup I can appreciate the work that goes into this event. Most of the teams at the World Cup were not professional. This makes any on field achievements all the better.
Since England won the World Cup by beating Canada 21-9 in the final, members of the winning squad have been awarded professional contracts. So for the first in the history of rugby in England Women will be paid to play the game they love. This is a huge step forward in the fight to get this sport recognised and the respect it needs in certain section of society. People, both men and women still feel there is no place for women to play rugby and also these battles are similar to the battles that Katie Taylor faced in her quest to get boxing recognised enough to get it into the 2012 Olympics. We now know that she won Gold at London 2012 and this began to turn the tide for female participation in sport. Nobody ever questioned female athletes who ran or swam.
A number of people have told me that no matter what happens, women’s sport will never be as popular as male sports. This may be the case but lets be honest how many people did not get sucked into the hype of the Women’s World Cup in France. I would like to state in this article that anyone that says that the women do not hit as hard or have the same skill level as the men , are completely wrong , call me biased or whatever but some of the skills I saw at the World Cup were of the highest quality and if a male player did anything like that they would get praise from every corner.
People also questioned the level of criticism that the team shipped after their heavy defeat to England and subsequent defeat to France in the 3rd/4th place play off. They said that if the Irish men’s team were beaten in two World Cup games that we, the public would be calling for players and coaches heads to role. This was nullified by the fact that Phillip Doyle had already announced he was to quit his role as Irish women’s head coach.
The biggest question now is for Women’s rugby will be who will be the new head coach and also will it be a full time or part time role?? Over to the IRFU !!
By
Cian Mc Gibney
27/08/2014.
