I simply cannot imagine a life without ladies’ Gaelic football. I first started playing Gaelic football at eleven and when I think back on my teens and early adulthood, so many of my fondest memories, closest friendships, and cherished opportunities have had this sport at the heart of them.. But until fifty years ago, there was no Gaelic football for girls and women.
Being a member of the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) is a part of my identity. It is a part of my personal history. I’m sure many other ladies’ Gaelic football players feel the same. However, it dawned on me when I was doing a master’s in public history in UCD some years ago that I knew very little about the history of the association I am a member of. And so, I got to work researching.
I quickly found that there was very little written about the history of ladies’ Gaelic football. But that did not mean there was not much to say about the LGFA and the sporting achievements of its members. In fact, there was plenty to write about the LGFA’s fifty-year history. From the games’ beginning as a carnival novelty act to its near 200,000 international membership today, the earliest competitions to the feats of record-breaking teams, it has been fascinating to delve into the history of ladies’ Gaelic football players, volunteers, and administrators at both local and national level.
What started as a master’s dissertation on the early years of the LGFA has expanded to PhD research on the history of women’s sport in Ireland and now, brought together in Unladylike to tell the story of fifty years of the LGFA.
It has been an honour and a privilege to write the first history book on the LGFA. I have been writing this book alongside my PhD studies, drawing on newspapers, archives, private collections and more to piece together the milestone moments that have made the LGFA the association that it is today. I hope that this is this is the start of a new chapter in the writing of Irish sports history because the story of ladies’ Gaelic football is not just about sporting achievement but also about challenging the status quo.
You can now shop for Unladylike: A History of Ladies Gaelic Football on dubraybooks.ie
