Meath’s double All-Ireland winning ladies football captain Shauna Ennis is hoping plans to integrate the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association will eliminate fixture clashes.

Ennis’ club Na Fianna were put in a very difficult situation last December when they were forced to play All-Ireland intermediate camogie and ladies football semi-finals in the space of 24 hours. With a large crossover of dual players, the Enfield-based club played Eglish of Tyrone in Darver, Co. Louth in the camogie semi-final before making the 300km journey south to Mallow to face Glanmire in the football semi-final the following day.

"We're not a massive club so we would have a huge crossover of girls who play both. We have nine outfield players that start for both teams," Ennis told The GAA Social podcast.

"Both associations [the LGFA and the Camogie Association] were pre-warned that if we won the two Leinster finals, the fixtures for the All-Ireland semi-finals were scheduled for the same weekend.

"Our argument was that there was a free weekend beforehand and a free week after, could we not play one of the games then. The LGFA came back and said 'no, we can't move it', we need two weeks to make up the programmes for the All-Ireland final or something like that. A kind of nothing response really to be honest.

"We were basically told the best we could do was play one on the Saturday and one on the Sunday."

She continued: "After that football match (which Na Fianna lost), I was just distraught, seething with anger. Anyone who tried to come near me I kept saying, 'this is not fair, this is a joke, this shouldn't have happened'.”

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