Camogie Association target record crowd for Glen Dimplex All-Ireland finals
Cavan's Roisin O'Keeffe, Laois' Aimee Collier, Cork's Ashling Thompson, Camogie Association President Brian Molloy, Galway's Shauna Healy, Antrim's Caitriona Graham and Armagh's Rachael Trainor pictured at the 2026 Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Championship Final Media Day at the Maldron Hotel Croke Park.
By John Harrington
Camogie Association President, Brian Molloy, is hopeful a record crowd will attend Sunday’s Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Finals in Croke Park.
The current record was set in 2023 when 30,191 supporters attended that year’s Junior, Premier, and Senior Finals, but Molloy believes that will be surpassed on Sunday when Galway play Cork in the senior final, Antrim play Laois in the Intermediate Final, and Cavan play Armagh in the Junior Final.
“Mid-30s hopefully is where we're going for,” said Molloy. “We were aiming for 10,000 in Semple (at the senior semi-finals) and we got over 10,000.
“People thought we were being overly ambitious when we said 10 versus the seven and a half the previous year and we broke the 10.
“You have to have ambition in these targets. You have to push it as hard as you possibly can. So, I'd like to see something between 30 and 40,000.
“The value for money proposition is extraordinarily strong. It's €30 for an adult to see three games. It's €100 for an adult to see one GAA final here.
“And the quality of the game is very, very good, so, I think there's a lot of reasons for people to go. I think we just need to keep building it and keep building it and keep building it. And be ambitious.”
Cork's Ashling Thompson, Laois' Aimee Collier, Galway's Shauna Healy, Armagh's Rachael Trainor, Cavan's Roisin O'Keeffe and Antrim's Caitriona Graham pictured at the 2026 Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Championship Final Media Day in Croke Park.
Molloy believes there are strong societal as well as sporting reasons for more people to attend high-level female sporting occasions like the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Finals.
“As a society we're very comfortable at encouraging young lads to perform on the field, and we're very strong at acknowledging physical prowess on the field, and physical success on the field," said Molloy.
“We're not as comfortable as a society at encouraging physical prowess on the field and putting in place the structures to help physical prowess on the field for women.
“That is something we've gotten hugely better at over the last number of years, probably over the last decade in fairness, but there's still a long way to go.
“It is already normalised that Croke Park is filled for the men's games, it's always a battle for the tickets and all the usual stuff that goes on. But we've kind of normalised it in society, in our associations, in the media, across everything, that it won't be filled for the female game. And that just doesn't make sense to me.
“If we're serious about the importance of supporting female participation in sports at the highest level, then we have to do more than speak about it; we have to actually come out and physically support them.
“My call has gone out to our own clubs, because it starts at home, it starts in the Camogie Association. We need to break away from the model that we have had, whereby the focus is on just the six counties that are competing in the games on the day.
“If you're in Waterford, or in Kilkenny, or Tipperary, and you're interested in Camogie, you should be coming up to the All-Ireland final day on Sunday. The fact that your county isn't in it, it's kind of immaterial.
“Obviously it changes the position for you, because you'll know the players, and you'll have a more direct connection with the game
“But it's our top level competition. We want young girls in particular to see what camogie at the top level is, at that very, very peak level is, and the only way to do that is come up and watch it, the only way to really experience it is to come up and watch it, come up with your friends.
“I think that corporates have a role to play here. You have sports and social organisations across all the large corporates, and they encourage people to go to concerts, and they encourage people to go to all sorts of different events; they need to encourage people to go and watch our national sports being played by women.
“The women that are playing there, because they're all amateurs as we know, they're employees in all these companies, they're working for all these companies, and we need to get better at saying, “do you know what, on Sunday, it's a great family day out, it's a great day out with your mates, it's a great day to come down and watch top level sport be played in Croke Park.”
“It's an amazing venue, we all know that, it's an absolutely brilliant venue, and the quality of the game is second to none. So that's the call: don't just say you support, don't just say I encourage, don't just say I'm in favour of, actually come down.”