FOUL PLAY TV Gabby: Dropping women’s football is so wrong
SPORTS presenter Gabby Logan has put the boot in over the way England’s Lionesses have been treated.
She is calling a foul on the decision to bring back men’s Premier League football while leaving our female players furloughed on the sidelines.
Last year, the nation roared on the Lionesses in unprecedented numbers as the team came within a whisker of reaching the Women’s World Cup final.
Now Gabby, 47, fears the huge strides made in advancing the women’s game will be lost.
She said: “For all those young girls who were inspired last year, thinking they could play, it’s kind of like saying, ‘It’s not that important, it’s not that bigger deal’.
“I’m really disappointed. It’s a missed opportunity. There’s no roaring going on now, is there? The Lionesses have got a right to shout about it.”
The Match of the Day host spoke to the Lionesses’ head coach Phil Neville about the situation. She said: “It’s a great source of frustration to him the game has not come back.”
Struggle
Gabby pointed out that because the men’s Euros has been put back to 2021 due to the pandemic, the women’s tournament for that year will now take place in 2022.
She said: “That in itself tells you where the women’s game fits. That’s where it is in the pecking order.”
But it’s not just the Lionesses who have had to struggle to make their mark.
Gabby has had to work hard to establish herself in a maledominated industry.
She said: “I felt that if I made a mistake, it would be noticed more because I was a woman.”
The star, who is married to former Scotland international rugby player Kenny Logan, found it particularly tough when she was pregnant with twins Lois and Reuben, now 14.
No one treated her badly but the presenter said she felt that she didn’t fit in. She deliberately wore clothes to disguise her bump when she was six months’ pregnant and presenting the Champions League Final for ITV.
Gabby told how she worried about telling her boss she was expecting – and what it meant for her career.
She said: “It’s one thing doing a Champions League Final as a woman, it’s another thing altogether doing it as a pregnant woman.
“They didn’t do anything wrong particularly, but they had never worked with a women who was pregnant before in that environment.
“I tried to hide it. I see women now, really celebrating their bumps, and think they look so beautiful. I feel a bit, ‘Oh, why was I trying to hide myself so much?’”
Gabby also recalled being told she looked too glamorous to present when she arrived for work at the BBC wearing a pair of high heels.
“The man said, ‘Would you wear those to do the dishes?’ which I just thought was an incredible thing to say.
“I want to look smart,” she said. “I’m not going to turn up in my pyjamas!”
Gabby fears Covid-19 could badly affect women in many areas of life, not just sport.
She said: “Women are going to suffer from very serious issues like domestic abuse to generally being in the jobs that get culled first.
“If we are not careful, this pandemic could have societal consequences that are going to put us back a few years.”