Ashbourne Cup
| Ashbourne Cup | |
|---|---|
Current season or competition: 2017 Ashbourne Cup
|
|
| Irish | Corn Ashbourne |
| Founded | 1915 |
| Trophy | Ashbourne Cup |
| Title holders | University of Limerick (6th title) |
| Most titles | University College Dublin (35 titles) |
The Ashbourne Cup is an Irish camogie tournament played each year to determine the national champion university or third level college. The Ashbourne Cup is the highest division in inter-collegiate camogie. The competition features many of the current stars of the game and is sometimes known as the ‘Olympics of Camogie’ because of the disproportionate number of All Star and All-Ireland elite level players who participate each year Since 1972 it has been administered by the Higher Education committee of the Camogie Association.
The next Ashbourne Cup will take place over the weekend of 11–12 February 2017.
In the final stages of the competition, six teams are divided into two groups of three in which each team plays two matches. The top two in each group go through to the cup semi finals while the bottom team in each group plays in the final of the Ashbourne Shield. The current holders of the cup are Waterford Institute of Technology having defeated UCC 2-10 to 2-2 in the 2011 final. The next Ashbourne Cup and Purcell Cup semi-finals and finals will be staged on the weekend of 18–19 February 2012 at Waterford Institute of Technology.
The competition is the brainchild of Agnes O'Farrelly (1874–1951), founder member (1914) and president (1914–51) of the UCD camogie club who later served as president of the Camogie Association of Ireland in 1941–2. In 1915 she persuaded her friend, Irish language activist William Gibson, (Liam Mac Giolla Bhríde (1868–1942), second Lord Ashbourne, to donate a trophy for the camogie intervarsity competition. The first game of intercollegiate camogie took place between University College Dublin and University College Cork on 18 April 1915. NUI Galway (then University College, Galway) joined the competition in 1916, Queen's University, Belfast in 1934, and NUI Maynooth (then St Patrick's College), New University of Ulster, Coleraine, and Trinity College, Dublin in 1972. Apart from 1934-7, until 1960 the competition was played on a league basis, and since then the concluding stages have been played together on a single weekend in mid-February. There was no competition in 1943, due to war-time restrictions, and the competition remained unfinished in 1963, when University College Dublin fielded an ineligible player for the final, which was drawn and never replayed. University College Cork claimed the title. Since 2010 the finals weekend has been staged alongside the Purcell Cup.
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