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Camogie legend boycotts Team of Century ceremony

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Angela Downey, who is widely regarded as the finest camogie player in the history of the game, refused to attend the presentation when she learned that her sister, Ann, was not selected to the team.
The taioseach, Bertie Ahern, presented the awards to the 14 players who were honored for their excellence in camogie, which is adapted from hurling, over the last century. Downey, who won 12 senior All Ireland titles with Kilkenny as well as a further six All-Ireland club titles in a glittering 25-year career, decided to register her disgust at her sister’s omission by refusing her invitation to the function.
“I really felt it would have been hypocritical of me to attend and pretend everything was rosy in the garden when it wasn’t,” Downey told the Irish Independent newspaper. “Ann gave 25 years to camogie, has 12 All-Irelands and actually has one more club title than me because I was suspended for one final. I asked around Kilkenny in the past fortnight and lots of people were disappointed by it and said our two names would have been the first they would have picked.”
Downey also said she asked the Camogie Association, who had picked the team, but the only response she received was that it was done by one individual and vetted by several others.
“Maybe if I could have discussed their reasons I might have been able to get my head around it,” she said, “but they wouldn’t tell me who had picked it and eventually I wrote a letter to Croke Park and told them I wouldn’t be there.
“I saw the ceremony on television and it looked like a real gala night. I was certainly not a decision I took lightly, but if I had gone I would have felt like a hypocrite.”
In the end, Downey, whose outstanding ability put camogie on the Irish sporting map, nominated a former Kilkenny teammate to accept the award on her behalf.
The awards ceremony is one of the main events to make 100 years of camogie in Ireland. However, Downey’s absence from the Team of the Century commemorative photograph leaves a blot on the sport’s history.

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