New LGFA president Micheál Naughton insists the association "will always hold our identity", while continuing to work closely with the GAA and the Camogie Association.
The Sligo native, representing Donegal and Ulster, succeeded Marie Hickey as president, at today's virtual Annual Congress.
Speaking on RTÉ's Saturday Sport, Naughton is looking forward to increasing the profile of "one of the fastest growing female sports in Europe" and key to that, he adds, will be the forging even greater links with the men's association and camogie.
"I want to continue the great work and collaboration that has existed up to now," he said. Apart from two counties - Armagh and Waterford - we do not own a pitch. I have to put that out there and thank the men's association for what they have done for us down through the years - to the clubs and counties for giving us their venues and pitches. Our association would not be in existence if it were not for the men giving us grounds and pitches. For that we are very grateful.
"I want to build stronger links and work together for the betterment of all players. We have the fastest growing female sport in Europe, just look at the attendances at the 2018 and 2019 All-Ireland finals. Over 56,000 attended the 2019 final but we want to increase the visibility of our games even more.
"Our slogan for 2020 was: 'If you can't see it, you can't play it". It's important to get the message out there and I would have to thank Lidl and TG4 for their work in promoting our games."
Naughton, however, did rule out any out any full integration with the governing bodies of men's football and camogie. "We will be working closely with them but we will always hold our own identity, have our own president and have our own rules," he added.
"I will now sit on the GAA executive. In the next few weeks, we'll be launching the Player Pathway - a joint initiative involving ourselves, the GAA and Camogie to help with player development and courses. I'll be hoping for more double-headers, not only for county games but at club level, too.
"You can't forget the club. Only 2% of our players play inter-county, that's 98% who play club. One of the good things to come out of 2020 was the creation of a proper structure of our club games. When we originally sat down to do our fixture plan at the start of the year, for the first time in the history of the LGFA there was a stand-alone time given to our club players."
