Their hair was tied-back, match-ready, and there were streaks of dirt on their faces. They looked strong and powerful, and heroic.

Whenever I saw that billboard, I felt glad that my young nieces see these images as a normal part of the media landscape. As a hurling-mad girl, growing up in the 1990s, I never saw sportswomen portrayed this way.

Though I had my camogie idols — the Downeys of Kilkenny, Jeannette Feighery of Offaly, the entire Tipperary team — media coverage of them was rare. You would never see these women on a billboard; you would rarely see them in a newspaper or on television.

And so, even more than I admired these great camogie players, I revered the hurlers: Nicky and Leahy and DJ. They were mythologised; they were the ones I pretended to be in puckarounds.

Still, even at a young age, I knew that no matter how far I progressed in my sport, I would never be as successful or as lauded as these hurlers. Because it was different for women.

The culture didn’t know what to make of sportswomen, particularly those in a team sport. Sportswomen challenge and expand our notions of femininity.

Anxieties over female physical prowess were manifested in different ways. There were the lovely girl photoshoots — everyone pretty, smiling, and unthreatening. There were All-Ireland fashion editorials in which players were asked what they liked to wear off the pitch, or there were colour pieces about rugby teams’ pre-match fake-tan rituals.

In England, the FA, bless them, have made a mess of reaching out to women, whether in their recent suggestion that pink whistles might keep more girls in the sport, or their well-intentioned, but infamous, tweet after the 2015 Women’s World Cup: ‘Our lionesses go back to being mothers, partners, and daughters today, but they have taken on another title — heroes.’

These examples, harmless though they may be, seem at pains to reassure the reader of the players’ femininity. Don’t be alarmed by their rough play, is the message; they’re very girly off the pitch.

As if this is the saving grace that makes women’s sport palatable. As if sportswomen aren’t confident in their identities; as if they don’t navigate every single day as women in a male-dominated arena.

But it is an uphill struggle. Teenage girls are dropping out of team sports at a much faster rate than their male counterparts. The narratives that boys and girls absorb about sports are vastly different.

A boy playing hurling knows that, one day, he could be a local hero, even a national hero. Everything around him — from media coverage to game attendances to what the lads down in the pub are talking about — reinforces this. For a boy, playing a team sport is, to use an old-fashioned word, becoming — it enhances his masculinity and his stature in the community.

To be female and play a team sport, however, means to run counter to the expectations of femininity. It means to be aggressive and physical, to not care what you look like. Girls who play team sports receive little social currency for their abilities and achievements, compared to their male peers.

If you’re an intercounty player, at the top of your sport, not only will few GAA fans consider you a hero, few will even know your name.

If we want to keep girls fit and healthy and playing sport, we need to change the narrative. Exercise for women is too often framed in terms of the physical benefits. It will keep you toned.

It will keep the weight off. Your skin will glow. But, clearly, the ‘it’s good for you’ approach is not working. We need to sell girls on the joy of competition, the camaraderie, the power and self-esteem you feel when you do something good on the playing field. We need to make young girls feel that they, too, can be heroes.

An obvious way to do this is to broadcast more matches. This is a chicken-and-egg conundrum: many will claim that women’s sports aren’t broadcast because there simply isn’t an audience for them.

But how can people begin to care about women’s sports when they know very little about them? When matches are played in the middle of nowhere and precious few are televised? How can people invest in the human drama of the women’s codes when they barely know the players’ names?

There are, of course, positive signs. The broadcasting of the women’s Six Nations rugby is now standard on RTÉ, since the Irish team’s incredible successes, and rugby fans now feel invested in the women’s code, which was barely on the radar a few short years ago.

TG4’s support for, and broadcasting of, ladies’ football games is significant and, while more broadcasts of camogie matches would be welcome, they are screening the camogie league final on April 23, for the fourth year in a row. (The Camogie Association’s YouTube channel, which features highlights of league games, is worth a subscription).

Last year, the ladies’ football All-Ireland drew 35,000 supporters — the highest ever for a women’s sporting event in Europe — and roughly half a million television viewers. There is an audience there.

The frustration is that there’s a ready-made audience for camogie and ladies’ football that isn’t tuning in. How many GAA fans have never considered watching a women’s game, because they believe that the standard isn’t as high?

Yet, how many of these same fans will enthusiastically support their local boys’ under-12s or Junior B team, despite the fact that it’s not at the level of inter-county senior hurling?

Again, it comes back to the narratives we tell ourselves. Hurling fans can project onto a 12-year-old boy, and see a future senior star in the making. But they’re not used to watching women. They have no context for that.

It’s not the fault of individual fans, but of the wider culture, that many can only conceive of female involvement in the GAA in terms of jersey-washing, sandwich-making, and supporting.

All of this can be changed, and the tools are already in place.

The recently-founded WGPA has been instrumental not only in securing funding for player welfare, but for driving storytelling around camogie and ladies’ football.

Their ‘Behind the Player’ series on YouTube is an inspiring look at players’ families, clubs and roots; another photo campaign showed players in both their playing gear and professional clothes, emphasising their dual roles as accomplished professionals and skilled amateur athletes.

Telling one’s own story isn’t easy, particularly for camogie players and ladies’ footballers.

GAA players tend to be modest to a fault, and women are socialised from a young age to deflect praise, to not draw attention to themselves. But it has to be done, because sport is built on mythology. If you don’t tell stories, you don’t spark the popular imagination.

Images matter. Narrative matters. Visibility matters. Thank goodness young GAA-mad girls are seeing those ladies’ football billboards, and knowing that, someday, it could be them up there. Knowing that the aspiration, at least, is real.

Sometimes, you need to see it in order to be it.