Thursday 27 June 2019

It's Different For Girls

I made a prediction to my sons soon after they went to high school in the 1990s: that women's football would become a big spectator sport. They don't remember pooh poohing this suggestion, though I'm sure they did. I couldn't see any reason why women's football should not develop to have a good balance of skill and athleticism. Sure, not as explosively quick as the best men, but no reason why the spectacle couldn't be compelling.

What I didn't know was that it already had been a big spectator sport: before 1921 when the FA banned women playing in officially organised football. The reason? Unladylike....

During the first world war, women working in munitions factories started football teams. And people went to watch in significant numbers as the Football League suspended all fixtures at the end of the 1914/15 season. The popularity continued after the war. On Boxing Day 1920 a crowd of 53,000 watched St Helens Ladies play Dick Kerr Ladies of Preston at Goodison Park. Was the real reason the FA banned the ladies that it was getting too popular?

Women's football has some way to go to equal the gates of 1920 other than for occasional matches. So I've watched some of the FIFA womens' world cup to gauge their progress. Some games have not impressed me but others have. I watched quite a bit of England's last 16 match with Cameroon with interest. I was impressed by all three of England's goals but also by the team's ability, fostered under manager Phil Neville, to play a passing and possession game. Their stated aim of passing opponents into submission worried me - spectators can die of boredom too, after all. But England don't play like that. Yes they try to keep the ball as all good teams should. But they also look to play it forward positively whenever they can. By positively I don't mean lumping it forward or just hitting the target woman - though I did that often enough playing at centre back when there wasn't any other option (sure, it wasn't a woman at centre forward but you know what I mean). The secret to giving players options for passes is of course movement - it's easy to criticise players for just hitting it upfield or indeed for passing sideways too often but if there aren't options you can't manufacture many great forward passes. I thought England were good at creating those options, though Cameroon did give them the space.

And I was also impressed at how they kept their focus while the Cameroon team were allowed to get away with some of the poorest behaviour I've seen on a football pitch anywhere, at any time, though I didn't see the start of the second half when England apparently did look rattled.

But the other thing that strikes me is that folk often say it would be better if women ran the world: it would be gentler and more harmonious. But I don't see much evidence for this in the worlds of business, politics (Myanmar, for example) or sport. Some folk say that's because you have lone women, like Thatcher, trying to outdo the men, and that it would be different if women really ran things. But the Cameroon team have given the lie to that as well, showing that an all-female group can behave worse than men on the pitch, spitting, elbowing and dissenting from decisions almost to the point of going on strike and then disgracefully saying they were the victims of racism.

Talking of an all-female group I was not particularly impressed with the referee either, other than for her patience. Though on reflection, at this stage of development of the women's game, perhaps she dealt with the situations she was presented in the most appropriate way at the time. If it had been a men's world cup match the referee could have expected to be sanctioned and never get near reffing a world cup match in the future. But what was Qin Lang supposed to do when Cameroon refused to kick off for a few minutes while disputing England's second goal?  Not unreasonably she was concerned that the Cameroon team might walk off. As an ex-referee myself (ok, only the Oxford Boys' League) I think she had two options besides the path she took. She could have given a quick warning followed by a yellow card to the woman causing the most trouble in the Cameroonian huddle. But my preferred option would have been to call over the Cameroonian captain and instruct her to get the kick off taken or she would be booked and then, a minute later, sent off. I must admit I only thought of this latter approach the next day and, in practice, either action would probably have escalated the situation into a walk out.

It may well be that the referee took the right approach in being tolerant and patient, though my big problem with that was it wasn't fair on England. Hopefully all the negative publicity will make women's teams around the world realise that such a behaviour won't help their cause of establishing women's football as a big time sport. Meanwhile FIFA will surely take action against Cameroon for failing to control their players and the women's game can move forward.

I'm not sure I will watch a lot of women's football in the future. A bit like I don't watch as much womens' tennis as men's, or women's athletics. For a start I'm a man. And if you want to see the quickest/highest/fastest exponents of most sports that will be male competitors, though I accept that some prefer the arguably greater subtlety of women's tennis to the men's power dominated game. But I hear some of you say that all that squealing and grunting isn't exactly subtle. One might say "not ladylike...."

And don't get me started on the sporadic lobbying for equal pay in football. Tennis is not an example, as the big competitions are held with men v men and women v women (plus some mixed doubles) on the same days to cleverly avoid any issues with the tv and gate money being attributable by gender. After all we all know what the result of that would be. Holding the men's and women's football world cups in parallel is thankfully impracticable, so forget trying to blur that one, equal pay advocaters. But the outcome of the equal pay case brought by the USA women's soccer team could be interesting as they probably get similar or maybe even larger audiences than their men's team does, so fair play if that is the case. Other than such isolated examples the simple fact is that, currently, more men are interested in sport than women, so the men's sports generate greater revenues. That may slowly balance out a bit over time.

I still think that women's football will grow to be a big spectator sport. And maybe the near meltdown by the Cameroon team will draw more attention to the sport; any publicity being good publicity if it makes people take a look.

But it will always be a bit different for girls.... (as Joe Jackson sang in his song turning around traditional male-female mores).

Still, I think I will watch some of England's quarter-final against Norway tonight. Come on you Lionesses!

2 comments:

  1. And talking of females in sport what about snooker, I'm just a little perplexed as to why we are not seeing women rising to the top of a sport which sadly remains male dominated. Indeed, it seems to me to be a sport where men and women should be able to compete together. Thoughts Oh great thinker?

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    1. Snooker is in long term decline with the number of tables available for people to play plummeting, so I would guess fewer people are taking it up. And the traditional dark snooker halls weren't very female friendly. Also long limbs help and I would imagine many women would be disinclined to drape themsleves over the table in that environment. A bit like the football debate, where smaller goals and pitches have been advocated by some, smaller tables might theoretically help but in practice that would mean even fewer facilities available for women, be it football pitches or snooker tables. Football will grow because of it's universal appeal but the game with little, hard coloured balls may be snookered.

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