VOTE HUNT…Kathleen Woods wants to be President
By Ciaran Woods
THIS weekend, current Ulster president Kathleen Woods will bid to become the next president-elect of the Camogie Association at their annual congress on her home patch of Armagh.
The Armagh City Hotel provides the venue for this year’s convention, where the Ulster candidate will go in a straight shoot-out with Kilkenny’s Catherine Neary for the top post, and she insists that she is ready to take on the role and is prepared for the responsibility.
“At the end of last year’s Congress, two past Presidents actually planted the seed in my head,” she said.
“I probably spent six months weighing everything up, mulling it over, and reflecting on my own place in life… asking the question as to whether or not I really wanted this and could commit to it. At the end of it all, the conclusion I came to was ‘yes.’”
Under her governance over the past three years, Ulster Camogie has been transformed in the eyes of sport’s governing bodies. Coming off the back of a damning Sport NI audit, Kathleen put her vast experience from her working life to use in reversing the fortunes of camogie in the northern province, and brought about an almost unbelievable transformation.
“I’m an administrator, I’ve been a primary school principal for over 25 years, so my entire working life has been of governance, management and administration,” continued Woods.
“So the experience is certainly there. In camogie terms, I think we have totally transformed the status of Ulster camogie in the space of three years, and I don’t think I could ever face anything as difficult or as challenging again.
“To go from basically a ‘nil’ rating by Sport NI in eleven areas to ‘excellence’ in six areas and one mark off ‘excellence’ in the other five is a heck of an achievement by any standards.”
Kathleen is a big supporter of the ‘one club’ model, fully supportive of further co-operation between the various units within the GAA family, but stresses that camogie must always retain its identity. However, she believes that another key factor must be easing the pressure on the association’s beleaguered volunteers at all levels.
“The volunteers must be our focus. Our volunteers, our bedrock, are struggling with what our game has become. The structures, the legislation has all expanded yet we are still expecting our volunteers to carry out all of these tasks. Our game and our association is virtually unrecognisable from what it was even a decade ago, and I believe we must support our volunteers and take that pressure off them as much as we possibly can.”
Delegates will gather in Armagh on Friday afternoon when congress activities will get underway, but it is on Saturday afternoon at around 3.30pm that delegates will be asked to make their ballot in secret for who will become the next president.
The Ulster candidate is bringing her usual sense of positivity to proceedings, and insists that whatever way the vote goes, she will still have a very active role to play in the association in the coming years.
“I’m a fairly pragmatic person. My mother always said that what is for you won’t go past you, and that’s the approach I’ll be taking.
“The feedback I’ve received has been positive, the people will vote for whoever they feel is the best candidate. However, the most important thing to me is that I know I have the full backing of my home patch of Ulster, and if I can reach out to enough counties and units beyond that, then hopefully it will go my way.”