Omagh native Ailís bidding for All-Ireland camogie honours

By Niall Gartland

THIS Saturday on the outskirts of Dublin, Omagh native Ailís Keyes will go in pursuit of All-Ireland honours.

An Environmental Geoscience Student at the University of Edinburgh, Ailís has linked in with Glasgow-based Ceann Creige, who take on Naomh Treasa in Saturday’s All-Ireland Junior ‘B’ Championship camogie final on the outskirts of Dublin.

Hailing from a prominent hurling and camogie family in Tyrone, she’s the daughter of Chris Keyes, who played a significant role in the renaissance of Omagh hurling after it had fallen by the wayside in the early years of the new millennium.

He sadly passed away three years ago but is an eternal source of inspiration to Ailís and the rest of the Keyes family.

Instilled from an early age with a passion for all things camogie, she played for club and county at underage level before moving to Scotland for university.

It would have been easier almost to forget about camogie altogether, but she regularly makes the considerable commute to Glasgow to play the sport she grew up with, and days like this coming Saturday make everything worthwhile, whatever the outcome.

Ailís said: “I just started playing with them this season. They’re a team in Glasgow so I’ve had to commute to training, but I thought, you know what, I’m really missing it so I’ll give it a go, back around February.

“It’s about two hours away but it’s just the way it is as it’s the only camogie team in all of Scotland, there’s another girl from Edinburgh and a few around Ayr, and we’ve all decided to make the commitment.”

Of course, there was always a viable alternative to camogie on offer regardless– shinty, the ancient Scottish sport, which she has also tried her hand at.

“I do play the shinty, I quite enjoy it, and when I moved to university, that’s what I picked up because I was able to play at that level.

“I really enjoy it, I think it’s class. It’s really tough but it’s good, a wee bit of an anger release and all that. It’s a lot more ground-based but there’s still a lot of similarities.”

Her camogie team Ceann Creige have lost only a single game all season so they’ll head across the water with high expectations of success in Saturday’s final. All their players are Irish natives this year, and their assistant manager is also from back home in Tyrone, Carrickmore’s Jimmy Treacey.

“We won within Britain our Intermediate league and championship, and then that fed into the All-Ireland Junior ‘B’ in Ireland, and we won our semi-final the other weekend against a team from Roscommon.

“It’s going to be a tough match against Naomh Treasa for sure, and I’ve played against a few of those girls at underage level, but we’ve come through the season very well so we’re all really excited.

“The only game we lost, a lot of our girls were away on holiday to be honest.”