Irish female MuayThai fighters

Siobhan Foley, Denise O Connell, Nicole Ahern

I went along to an international MuayThai fightnight in Ireland on Saturday. It was great to see quite a few women's fights. The three fighters above are all from the home gym in Cork, while their opponenets were Scottish (2) and Irish.

Talking to them after the fights, it was inspiring to see how dedicated they all are to training, and fighting. It can be hard sometimes to convince women to try contact sports. So watching other women competing and seeing how much they love it is far more effective than just talking about it. From what I saw on Saturday there are more beginners around in the women's division now than I've ever seen in Ireland, so someone is doing something right.

Over the next few weeks, I'll run interviews with these women and a few other people I talked to at the show. I know I bang on about this all the time, but it's really great to see organisations like the Irish MuayThai Council really pushing for women to get involved, such a huge change from years back. ( Old, me? not at all!)

What do you think your sport could do to get more women competing?