Dan Shanahan believes that female inter county players should be treated the same as their male counterparts.
Camogie and ladies football teams are playing the 2023 championships under protest. The GPA are looking for the Camogie Association, the LGFA and the GAA to implement a squad charter for 2024. The Waterford camogie team wore #UnitedForEquality t-shirts before last weekend's All Ireland championship game against Antrim while the ladies football team staged a sit down protest before their clash with Meath. Shanahan served as coach with the Déise camogie side in 2020.
"It's so disappointing that the ladies aren't getting the same as the lads," he told WLR's Lár Na Páirce show. "I was lucky enough to be involved with the Waterford camogie team and I often went to fields where there were no toilet facilities. Girls came from long distances, not getting expenses, gave everything they could, got into their cars, without showering, without food and went back to their colleges and went back to their clubs. Things have to change. I don't know how it's going to happen but it has to change and I admire the ladies, both football and camogie, for standing together. I'm three or four years away from it and this is still happening. Things have got better for the girls in Waterford and rightly so. They train as hard as anyone. I was lucky enough to be involved with those girls. I speak so highly of them and I respect them so much for what they did for me when I was there and the effort they put in but things have to change for the ladies. They have to get proper pitches, proper expenses, everything that the lads are getting."
Hear more from Dan Shanahan on Lár Na Páirce from 6.10.
