Hurling & Camogie

New camogie President Hilda Breslin carrying on Larkin family traditions

Irish trade unionist 'Big' Jim Larkin, pictured in 1923.
Irish trade unionist 'Big' Jim Larkin, pictured in 1923. Irish trade unionist 'Big' Jim Larkin, pictured in 1923.

108 YEARS ago Big Jim Larkin led a workers' strike that was commonly known as the Dublin Lockout. Today his great grand-daughter Hilda Breslin will become the 31st President of the Camogie Association tasked with leading the game out of a different kind of lockout.

"Larkinism was about fighting not just for a loaf of bread but also for a rose in a vase on the workers' table," says the latest national leader to emerge from the Larkin line.

"It's about 110 years since Big Jim and his sister Delia founded the Women's Worker's Union. He never underestimated strong women and their and their strong voices needing to be heard.I think in that context he would appreciate the significance of my election to lead the Camogie Association towards its 120th year."

Breslin was raised in a household that gave back to the community, a household that valued equality. It was also a family with strong Ulster ties; a Breslin grandfather came from Donegal, and of course Big Jim lived as a child in Burren in south Down.

"My grandfather "young" Jim Larkin followed his father and was a Labour Party politician and trade union leader. Then his daughter and my mother (Hilda Larkin-Breslin) was involved in SIPTU and active in setting up centres for the unemployed here in Kildare and in fighting for women's issues.

"My father was also active in trade unionism, as an official and I have a sister who is prominent in local politics. So we were always taught to look out for our community, helping them where we could.

"I was always interested in camogie, initially with the club here in Athy, then I was county secretary and for the past few years I have been Leinster chair and sitting on a number of committees at central level."

Hilda Breslin was voted in as President-elect at the virtual Congress held just before Christmas – it had been postponed from its usual slot of around Easter because of the introduction of restrictions around COVID. She will take over now at another online Congress.

"We have come a long way during the past year in learning how to adapt to situations and I think that those lessons need to be brought forward during my Presidency to strengthen our organisation.

"In fairness we already had trialled streaming games in 2019 in conjunction with two of our main sponsors Liberty Insurance and Littlewoods. So we had something in place and we then moved to stream all rounds of all the national championships last autumn.

"I think it was a huge success and will stand us in good stead moving forward. Teenagers spend so much time nowadays on social media. Now they can watch players from every county and we also had a lot of club games streamed as well. We can use those games to promote fixtures this year, next year and further down the line.

"I think we will be streaming more games this year. It is fairly cost effective and it gets our players seen, which was one of the corner-stones of the 20 x 20 campaign."

That 20 x 20 campaign was launched three years ago to increase the profile of women's sport in the media and the new President is passionate about the message from that campaign.

"It has taken a long battle for women to achieve something close to equality in society. Everyone involved in women's sport knew there was still inequality in sport, inequality in funding, inequality in media coverage and what the 20 x 20 campaign has done is bring that to a wider public awareness.

"The local media cover women's sport quite well. Perhaps the national media has dragged its heels a bit and unless you get national exposure and viewership, you will struggle to get the revenue.

"We are all tax-payers and therefore we all should have equal access to government funding. Unfortunately that doesn't happen and, until that changes, we won't have a level playing field."

But Breslin, an Audit Standards manager with IAASA (Irish Auditing & Accounting Supervisory Authority), also can see that the GAA in general has been slow to avail of different forms of media coverage.

"It is only relatively recently that we have been able to see as much hurling and football on TV. I think initial reluctance came from a fear that attendance figures would be hit. That wasn't the case and the GAA has prospered."

The incoming President has sat for the past six years as chair of the national fixtures' committee and is well aware of the difficulties there would be in accommodating TV coverage while also dealing with other issues that impact on the games at national level.

"Every so often there will be an outcry when we can't resolve a clash of fixtures for dual players at intercountry level. That happens in less than 10% of clashes. What people don't appreciate is the amount of co-operation Camogie and LGFA has and how well we work together to avoid clashes.

"While I was Kildare camogie secretary we worked schedules with the LGFA in the county to avoid clashes, the same at Leinster level. But at intercountry level, you might have an arrangement with TV to cover a game and it can't be changed, or a venue is not available at another time.

"We are dependent on GAA venues to hold our major games and they are not always available when we need them.

"Both LGFA and ourselves are very much in favour of promoting the family of gaelic games. I have to say that most of the time we manage to accommodate camogie and football a lot better than our male counterpart as nowadays there are very few men playing both hurling and football at intercountry level.

"Indeed there will be a motion before Congress on the dual player as we try to put into rule our desire to accommodate her."

Breslin is also hopeful that some of the new playing rules trialled last year will be passed at Congress.

"Being allowed to trial adaptations to the playing rules is a big step forward for us. Last year we brought in several changes for the season and they will all come before Congress with minor tweaks here and there.

"There was a lot of positive reaction from the players and I would be hopeful that Congress will embrace them."