FELLOW MEN! STICK with me. I’m going to discuss women’s football and there’s a chance you’ll be labelled an idiot during the piece, depending on your outlook.
During the week I described a man as going beyond paying lip service to women’s football, because most of us do nothing other than pay lip service to it and expressing our ‘surprise’ at the skill levels during the recent Women’s World Cup only shows our own inherent biases.
The World Cup was great for the women’s game, globally and nationally. On the back of the excellent live coverage – and impressive viewing figures – on TG4 and RTE, not only was the women’s game well presented, it was also very well covered in terms of punditry with a number of women involved in Irish football giving considered and in-depth analysis that we’ve come to lack on the men’s side as we shake off the ‘entertainment not information’ hangover from the Dunphy, Brady & Giles era.
Many of those who work with me – who wouldn’t watch League of Ireland matches – were hugely complimentary of the standard, the passion, the lack of histrionics we associate with many high-profile players in the men’s game. When packaged properly, and when treated and analysed seriously, there is no question that the women’s game stands up successfully to scrutiny and criticism from the general public.
Hot on the heels of a positive Women’s World Cup was the news that the Irish Women’s University Side – featuring several Women’s National League players – had finished fourth in the World University games. Lisa Fallon, who has worked with Cork City FC and Northern Ireland was announced as part of the Chelsea set up, and the University of Limerick hosted the schoolgirls’ Gaynor Cup tournaments in front of great crowds.
I took my daughter down to UL to watch the U15 Gaynor Cup Final between Cork and South Tipperary and thanks to the involvement of girls from the Cork City FC set-up and the five starters on the South Tipperary team from my own club, Cashel Town, I was in the happy position to know some of the players contributing to a fantastic final where Cork deservedly won in the end after a penalty shoot-out.
There were scouts from several clubs watching the tournament and a couple of the girls I know personally are off to train with WNL U17 sides over the summer.
While the news about the departure of Colin Bell from the National set-up and the ongoing uncertainty around the future of the game as a whole from Abbottstown have created distracting – though in my opinion not derailing – headlines, there is a sense that for the first time in a long time that there is genuine momentum behind women’s football on the island. We feel far from the crisis of two years ago when the senior women’s team highlighted their disgraceful treatment at the hands of the National Association and the apathy they faced compared to the men’s national team.
To continue the progression of the game here, steps need to be taken – we need to start following on the example of the GAA when they announced that Ladies Football semi-finals will now be played in Croke Park. The WNL Cup Final is played as a curtain raiser to the men’s final in the Aviva Stadium, but the semi-finals are worthy of being televised and played in our better stadia – even if it required setting neutral venues such as the Brandywell, Tallaght Stadium, Turner’s Cross or Dalymount.
WNL games, especially underage games are still treated as a bit of an afterthought and the coverage and promotion needs to be upped – the World Cup shows that if the games are packaged in the right way and analysed seriously, then the interest and crowds can follow.
Of course, growing interest increases some negatives too. In any group, you will get the tiny minority who are just – well – idiots. One of the bigger, though less important, challenges facing women’s football in Ireland is the lad who will watch the US Women’s team lift the World Cup and will convince himself, and try to convince others, that any 11 men from any amateur team in Ireland would beat them in a match. There are lads who are utterly convinced that no women’s team could ever beat any man’s team. No matter how athletic, skillful, energetic or capable those female players are, there are idiots whose only card will be, ‘Yeah, but they’re women’.
As they dribble beer onto the polo shirt stretched to breaking point across their guts, they are convinced they and their mates could outdo any women’s team over 90 minutes.
They’ll argue games are shite because they’re being played by women, the goalies are rubbish because women are afraid of the football, the pundits are rubbish because women don’t understand football. They will ridicule the women they know who find Giroud, Ronaldo or some other footballer attractive, while themselves reducing Alex Morgan to a pretty face, failing to grasp their own hypocrisy.
As a league of Ireland supporter, I’ve built up an immunity to idiots telling me, ‘The thing I like’ is shite.
Supporters of the women’s game face a similar path now as they try to punch their way up through the crust of ill-informed opinion ill formed on barstools. Don’t waste your time convincing those who don’t want to know that the product is good, build it up organically and focus on those who have a positive interest, but who don’t know where to start. Make the environment around the matches as positive as possible; ensure that boys and girls are as aware of Louise Quinn as they are of James McClean. Grow a thick skin.
Further exposure and engagement with the game is essential and the fact that the Women’s senior qualifiers will be televised is great news. Education of – and engagement by – the general public is the best weapon against naysayers, they won’t come on board until it’s already popular anyway. Look at the decades long battle women’s boxing has faced to the point where Katie Taylor – a former Irish Women’s international footballer – is a celebrated household name and hero.
It’s a long road, but it’s one worth travelling.
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