Updated at 09.51

A LONDON-BASED camogie club has announced that its players will no longer wear skorts as part of a campaign that they hope leads to shorts becoming a standard part of players’ kit for the code.

Thomas McCurtains, the only GAA club in East London, launched their Shorts not Skorts campaign at their grounds this morning, where they unveiled the specially designed shorts they will wear from now on. 

The club is calling on delegates attending the Camogie Association’s Annual Congress at the Talbot Hotel in Clonmel from 31 March 31 to 1 April to approve a motion proposing that skorts be dispensed with in favour of shorts as official playing gear.

Fielding teams in camogie, men’s and women’s football, hurling and handball, TMC came to the decision after the players voted unanimously in favour of moving away from the standard uniform due to “discomfort and impracticality”, to enable them to focus on their games.

The club has released a report entitled The Long and Skort of it: what purpose does the Skort play in today’s game? arising from a survey of 240 people, which details that 82% of respondents preferred to wear shorts than skorts when playing camogie.

Meanwhile, 75% believed that the skort does not reflect current societal standards relating to clothing and sporting apparel, with tennis and golf two very traditional sports that have allowed their female participants to make that transition while rugby and ladies football are team sports where the players wear shorts.

An almost unanimous 98% believed that women should be comfortable with their clothing in sports.

“The skort is proving a barrier for people accessing the sport,” the a statement accompanying the report reads. “Uncomfortable, unflattering, chaff inducing, patronising are repeated statements from those surveyed. Shorts are fit for function and performance. Skorts are not. Report findings cite that people were put off playing the sport because of it.”

At present, Camogie Association rules state that playing gear must consist of a skirt, skort or divided skort and that the penalty for not conforming to that requirement “can” result in a yellow card.

“Thomas McCurtains are introducing shorts to our kit on an official basis, archiving the traditional skort into the history books and marking a new era to bring the sport forward,” says Kelly Ann Brennan, a player and co-manager of the Thomas McCurtain’s team.

“There’s a massive conversation on this topic. It sparks a debate about tradition, accessibility to sport, purpose and function and inequality between women and men in sport.”

“It’s no surprise that over 80% of those surveyed prefer shorts over skorts. Skorts, in their essence, were invented to make activities more comfortable for women yet now, for us do the complete opposite.

“It’s the embarrassment of having to pull the shorts down after sprinting for a ball, the unflattering fit and the uncomfortable nature of the fabrics with which they’re made.

“I would love to see our dual stars, in the near future, not to have to worry about wearing different kit for two sports under the Gaelic games umbrella. In an age when women have never been more visible in sport, I am very proud that my own club are standing up for equality and to make a change.

“One of our mottos is ‘Never compromise on our principles’ and wearing skorts is a compromise we are no longer willing to make.”

You can access the petition for the initiative here.

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