THE LAST POINT: Celebrating Women's sport

Friday might have been International Women's Day but for Leitrim sport, it felt like International Women's week as the county's female sporting heroes excelled seemingly all around the country in a frightening variety of sports.

It got me thinking about how women's sport is regarded compared to the men's - just take DCU's back to back triumphs in the O'Connor Cup  in Cork, Leitrim duo Leah Fox and Sarah Reynolds playing key roles in their extra time semi-final win and again in Saturday's Final, a second title for Manorhamilton's Leah and a first for Sarah and a big deal for Leitrim.

Add in DCU's further success in the Lagan  and HEC Cups where Ballinamore Sean O'Heslins duo Kelly Beirne and Michaela Harte were part of the squads and Dearbhla Rooney of Glencar Manorhamilton and Drumkeerin's Ella McNamara on the ATU Sligo team who claimed the Lagan Cup and it was a very successful weekend for Leitrim at third level in ladies football.

Only, it didn't capture the attention of Leitrim sports fans the way Paul Keaney playing for UL last year in the Sigerson Cup did, despite the best efforts of Leitrim LGFA to publicise the feats of their players down in Cork - mirroring what we witnessed in Glennon Brothers Pearse Park the previous Sunday when the travelling Green & Gold support was noticeably larger for the men's game than it was for the women's clash.

This isn't a lecture on the need to support women's sport or an 'eat your vegetables” diatribe where I try to make people feel bad for not turning up to cheer on our Ladies' sporting heroes but rather an illustration of the challenges that women's sport regularly faces.

THE LAST POINT: CHEERS AND TEARS IN PEARSE PARK

Admittedly, Leitrim fans vastly outnumbered the home fans for the Ladies game in Pearse Park, just as they did for the men's game later in the afternoon but the influx of fans from all parts of the county for the men's game only served to demonstrate the disparity in support and it isn't down to one being more successful that the other! Leitrim Ladies have won two Connacht Intermediate titles, twice reached the last eight in the All-Ireland Intermediate grade and have qualified for the League semi finals for the third time in a row.

So success, or even making finals (as Leitrim's hurlers can testify) doesn't bring the fans out unless of course it is a big day out in Croke Park! Credit those that do choose to follow the ladies, often at times when there is a clash with men's games, but success isn't the criteria either - Cork Ladies are the most successful team in the history of Ladies football and they didn't attract legions of Rebels to their games either. 

I'm not sure it is as better in other sports - does Muireann Devaney, back in the red & white of Sligo Rovers in their SSE Airtricity Women's National League draw with Shelbourne, draw the same gaze as her fellow Leitrim star and Bit O'Red mens' captain Niall Morahan? Or do the exploits of Mohill's Dearbhaile Beirne, a League winner no less with Peamount Utd,  garner the same attention as those of Darragh Rooney for example?

Muireann Devaney in action for Sligo Rovers against Shelbourne Picture: Sportsfile

Devaney  is one of those remarkable stories that used to pop up in men's sport 40 or 50 or 60 years ago - a sports person excelling at two radically different sports at one and the same time - a truly outstanding sports person, not sports woman, sports person!

Incidentally, great to see young Lauren Devaney, captain of the St Clare's CS Manorhamilton team who won the FAI Small Schools All Ireland crown earlier this year, make the bench for Sligo Rovers  - another sign of the burgeoning exploits of Leitrim players in the soccer world, with Drumreilly's Evan O'Connor for Treaty United & Manorhamilton's Eanna Clancy and Morahan all start for their teams over the past weekend.

I've written before about the “If they see it, they can be it” campaign that posits the idea that simply promoting a sport can turn around the great Irish sporting public but that doesn't seem to be working - and it's not confined to Irish sport if you look at the  attendances at the Women's Super League across the water with the Premier League and there is simply no comparison.

Great strides have been made with attendances growing at an impressive rate but given where they have come from, they're a long way away from matching men's games - the LGFA are among the great innovators in promoting women's sport but even their record attendances at All-Ireland Finals was built largely on discounted prices for juvenile teams. It is a wonderful marketing tactic that Barcelona FC copied when giving away tickets to their ‘socio” club members when they set a new women's sport attendance record some years ago.

It is different in individual sport - Sarah Lavin, Sharlene Mawdsley & Rhasidat Adeleke are  bigger stars than their Irish athletics male counterparts after their exploits this winter and swimmer Mona McSharry is just as well known as new World champion Daniel Wiffen. Jockey Rachel Blackmore is revered every bit as much as Ruby Walsh, maybe more so, and Katie Taylor and Kellie Harrington are undoubtedly the pride of Irish boxing - even with their glittering array of stars.

Maeve Quinn in action for the Ireland Masters team against Australia in the International Rules clash in Charlestown Picture: Martin McIntyre

Maybe it is a team thing and maybe it is just going to take time. The old attitude that women shouldn't be playing contact sports is a dusty fragment of the past, echoing back to a time when half the population were considered second class citizens at best, proclaimed the weaker sex who had to be protected for their own good. Incredibly, it was only in 1984 that the Olympics introduced the Marathon for women and even at that, the longest race on the track was just 3,000m!

Attitudes have changed so much that the sight of Maeve Quinn lining out for Ireland in the Masters International Series last weekend, playing in goal, raises not an eyebrow nor causes a stir except to marvel at her remarkable longevity after a career that saw her claim All-Ireland titles with Leitrim at Junior level (1988) and Intermediate (2007) - 17 years later, she still stars on the playing fields.

The exploits of Leitrim's sports women isn't confined to our shores with the news that Eilish O'Dowd, fresh from winning an All-Ireland Senior title with Dublin last year, has now joined Aine Tighe in the AFLW, a remarkable double achievement for the Ballinamore woman and capping off a truly wonderful 12 months.

THE LAST POINT: A SHOCKING WAY TO WIN OR LOSE!

Tighe, playing for Fremantle over in Perth, and O'Dowd, in the colours of Great Western Sydney Giants, over on the east coast of Australia are literally separated by an entire continent but that won't diminish the pride Leitrim people will take in their achievements and there'll be a few early mornings over the AFLW season as friends, family and former clubmates tune in to follow their exploits.

It is  a start, a welcome one at that, but at a time when equality and integration are key buzzwords, we still have a long way to go. Sport will eventually get there but given the disparity in attendances we see,  it is going to take quite a bit of time.