Former Tyrone star Gemma Begley believes that everyone involved in our indigenous games can do their part in pushing for equality – whether the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Associations remain separate organisations or not.

The Gaelic Players Association and Women’s Gaelic Players Association passed near-unanimous votes at their recent AGMs to merge into one 4000-strong players’ body.

So with that backdrop, we’ve conducted a Q and A with the WGPA executive member Begley to garner her thoughts about the new arrangement.

Last year the WGPA commissioned a survey of 535 players which revealed that they receive less than a quarter of the government funding than men, and that 93% of female players at intercounty level receive no travel expenses at all, with the cost of fuel averaging €55 per week.

The LGFA decided to reimburse match-day expenses at the outset of the championship a few months back – progress of a sort – but there is still a long road to travel in the march for equality.

Niall Gartland: The first thing I was wondering is what impact this merger will have on your own job?

Gemma Begley: We’re figuring that out – there’s an interim period before the first AGM of the new association so there’ll be a four or five-month period of figuring out how things will work. I’ll still be there – I’m not going anywhere and that’s the main thing.

NG: The merger has been in the pipeline for quite a while now. Have you been supportive of the general idea since it was first mooted?

GB: It was a couple of years in the making. Our members passed a motion in early 2019 to formalise a partnership, so there’s been a lot of planning involved, talking to members and looking at structures. We’re happy to get it over the line and it’s great that we got a vote of confidence from the members at the AGM. It was a mixture of relief and excitement. It’s not a magic wand that’s going to fix everything overnight, but it’s a good first step and a great endorsement in the idea of working together.

NG: Was there much canvassing on your part to convince players that this is a good idea?

GB: There wasn’t really. We didn’t try to influence it in that respect, we just set out the structure and principles that we’re working from. We had a new constitution drawn up and that was only really finalised in the month before the AGM was called. It was only from that point we were speaking about it to members in detail. We gave ample opportunity for members to ask questions and to give their views, but there wasn’t much feedback either way which we took to be a positive, and I suppose that spoke for itself on the night, it was well-received.

NG: In terms of what you’ll want to achieve, there’s a major gap in funding so I assume you’ll want to reduce that if nothing else (€3m is currently provided to male inter-county players and €700,000 to their female equivalents?

GB: That’s been flagged a couple of months ago in our ‘Levelling the Field’ report which came out a few months ago and had been on hold since March because of Covid. Obviously the GPA’s funding programme has been in existence for a bit longer and they’ve made very good arguments for the level of funding we get.

Ours is newer, and it’s a different model, it’s a team grant rather than an individual grant, but on principle we feel that the gap should be closed. Our members are among the chief exponents of our indigenous games and they’re role models for young girls and boys in sport, You saw this year more than ever, how intrinsic they are to public health messaging, and the role they play within communities and societies across Ireland.

We feel like they’re on the same platform as male players and that they play a very important role in participation in sport for young people, so it’s only fair that we put the case forward that they should be given an equal opportunity to be the best that they can be at their sport and as athletes,.

We feel the best way to do that is to recognise them as equals and the most obvious way to achieve that is through public funding. Obviously it’s taxpayer money and we’re aware of that, but there’s bigger questions of principles. It’s a bigger discussion to be honest but we’d like to see the gap closed and the girls given an equal investment.

NG: An article published last week in the Irish Times expressed the belief that the GAA is ‘institutionally sexist’. It got a lot of criticism for avoiding the fact that the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association are different organisations, but you argued on Twitter that people can’t ignore the cultural and institutional issues at play in society.

GB: That’s it, it’s probably a more nuanced argument that Twitter allows people to express. She didn’t mention the LGFA or Camogie Association, but I’d suggest that anyone who thinks there isn’t sexism in the GAA talks to any female who either plays or participates in a committee. It’s not enough to point out that the GAA would like to merge – there’s nothing stopping anyone at club or county level from taking their own lead on it.

Nobody’s ever asked me if I want to vote on joining the GAA. Maybe that’s for down the line and I suppose it would be interesting to see what the sentiment would be, but I could see only benefits of a one-county model.

Still I don’t think it’s good enough to say we want to merge – there’s nothing to stop a county coming together and saying ‘how we do better support our female players’, it doesn’t have to be put down in a black and white contract. There was a proposal put forward at the Tyrone men’s AGM, that Club Tyrone would support all the codes, not just football or hurling. The same motion was brought forward before, and it was passed to the finance committee and nothing came of it.

If you ask anyone in Tyrone GAA or Club Tyrone, I’d imagine they’d all say we’re part of the one GAA family, so you’d hope that in the future things will improve. But I think everyone needs to be challenged to say how can this happen – people are mindful, for example, of gender equality in the workplace and going forward hopefully it’ll be the same in our sport as well.

NG: Do you think the pandemic brought issues of sexism to the surface? The most obvious instance was when Galway ladies Galway had 20 minutes to warm up ahead of their All-Ireland semi-final against Cork because the venue was changed at the last minute.

GB: It probably did in some ways but I suppose you always feel you’re preaching about it. The government grants has certainly helped to raise the levels of support in terms of sports science and backroom teams but as regards the use of facilities there hasn’t been much change at all that I can see,

There’s a systematic barrier that players have no control over and it’s up to the three governing bodies or the individual county boards to come to agreements on the use of county grounds, especially when they get public funding for their infrastructure and development. There’s a lot of positivity as well, there’s good stuff in development of the game and the media coverage, you don’t want to be negative the whole time

The other thing that’s come to the fore was travel expenses. When you’re asking players to travel individually to training because of Covid or get a lift with someone in your bubble it becomes a big problem especially as about half our members are students. A lot of them lost casual work due to Covid and that compounded the problem, and when they came back to action in October it looked like some of them were going to have to travel to matches 150 miles away without reimbursement. In fairness to the ladies and camogie associations, they recognised for the first time the need to cover travel expenses as the players were recognised as elite athletes that were allowed to perform when no-one else was but with that privilege came a responsibility for the players to behave properly, so help was needed.

We’d been trying to highlight it for the last five years and it ties in with the government grants – it’s a natural fit in that respect.. We’re very realistic about the funds available but when you see what players put into it, you have to start looking at solutions. If you look at the likes of dual players in Cork travelling huge distances, it would be a dereliction of our duty if we didn’t find their corner and that’s what we’re here for. Commercial coverage has increased and when you consider the role females play in society, it’s something we feel is needed so at least people are trying to knock their heads together and come up with solutions, and hopefully it continues.

NG: The ladies in Tyrone have to pay for the use of Garvaghey. Armagh ladies have developed their own facilities – is that something we could look at?

GB: I think there are enough GAA facilities in Tyrone as it is and it’s a shame everyone can’t come together and work together. Most Gaels in Tyrone and most Club Tyrone supporters would like to see some joined up thinking and that’s my own opinion, Fair play to Armagh for the work they put in they obviously felt that’s what they needed to do to accommodate their county squads. However, as a general principal going forward, I’d probably prefer to see one GAA family where everything becomes shared. I’ve had a really good experience of that with my own club Carrickmore, and maybe that’s brought to bear in my thinking about the intercounty game.

NG: Finally, what do you think of the appointment of your clubmate Kevin McCrystal as new Tyrone senior ladies manager, and do you have a word for Gerry Moane who recently resigned from the post?

GB: Gerry (Moane), Barry (Grimes), Sarah (Connolly) and the whole team were brilliant. There was a very solid structure in place that helped to bring young girls through, and there was good momentum going forward on the back of winning the All-Ireland Intermediate in 2018. This year was a bit of a write-off, I don’t think you could read anything into it, and you saw all the shocks in the club and men’s games. Kevin has all the potential in the world and he’ll not be found wanting in terms of his effort. We ran Mayo close in the championship last year and beat Armagh in the league before the lockdown, so we’re not as far away as it appeared in this year’s championship, and Kevin’s energy and enthusiasm will hopefully push them on.