Chix with Stix

'Ah, it's camogie alright, Jim, but nawt as we know it!' might well be the response of 'Star Trek' veteran Scottie to the front cover of the latest edition of 'FairPlay' magazine.

As part of their 2004 Centenary celebrations the Camogie Association are really looking to create a new image of camogie - hip, innovative and sexy!! - in the best sense of the word, of course. If that's their aim, then they're off to a good start with these three players.

The slogan 'Chicks with Sticks' came about at one of the Centenary Committee's brainstorming meetings and it caught on big time a while ago starting with Tom Humphries doing an article about it in the 'Irish Times' in his Locker Room column. The girls were featured in 'Ireland on Sunday' two days ago, 'The Sunday People' as well as on the front page of 'The Examiner'. Greater love hath no woman for her sport than to appear on the front page of the 'Examiner'.

The players are Aoife Cullen, Eimear Brannigan and Sonya Byrne from the St. Vincents club in Dublin. All three are current members of the Dublin squad. Aoife was one of the first recipients of a camogie scholarship in NUI Maynooth.

Between the three of them, they have several Dublin County Championships medals, one Leinster Senior Club Championship and they were on the St. Vincents team that were All-Ireland Club Finalists in 1998. That's more than 99.99% of male hurlers can claim …

Vincents won something like four-in-a-row in the '90s while they were known as 'Marino'.

Fairplay sport and leisure magazine was introduced across Ireland in February 2002. It is a bi-monthly, picture driven A4 publication promoting and supporting primarily women in sport and leisure in Ireland.

Fairplay is distributed free through Health and Fitness Clubs, Leisure Centres, Hotels, Universities, Third Level Colleges and Institutes of Technology (term time), Sporting Associations and Businesses right across the thirty-two counties. It's available to buy in larger retail outlets and is available via subscription at their website - www.fairplay.ie. All back issues are there if you want to have a look and see what we are about.

To date, in their first nine editions they have featured some 55 sports and many, many sports women and men - without prejudice.

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