‘A poignant day’ for the women’s game
Just under 50,000 were at Wembley, they said on BBC One; 50 striking as an appropriate number given this year was the anniversary of the first Women’s FA Cup final in 1971. And it was on this day in 1921 that the Football Association banned women’s football from Football League stadiums; it has been widely claimed that women’s matches at the time attracted crowds of up to 50,000.
The BBC coverage took in both 1921 and 1971: Gabby Logan said that she “had a lump in her throat”, watching the two captains from that early Seventies match bring out the trophy, on what she called a “poignant day”. Emma Hayes, the Chelsea manager, said in a prerecorded interview before kick-off: “I go into work every day not just to win but to grow our game,” adding: “Of course I want to win – but I know I am part of something much bigger than that.”
Commentator Jonathan Pearce found time in a hectic first half to discuss the recovery of Arsenal goalkeeper Ann-katrin Berger from thyroid cancer. “Since I have been involved with women’s football, I have come across so many remarkable stories: heartache, anxiety, loneliness, overcoming mental problems. And here they are expressing themselves,” he said.
Southampton’s Lesley Lloyd, the winning captain from 1971, said she was delighted by the great advances made by the sport, and for the players. Her pre-match meal before that Cup final, in which they defeated Stewarton Thistle 4-1, was “a cheese and pickle sandwich”.
So themes of progress, of movements towards equality, but also recognition that society has not reached it yet, of the dialectic between covering women’s sport purely in terms of what happens on the pitch, versus foregrounding what it means to the people playing, to those watching, to the wider social world. Of course, no sport exists outside society. The past two notable football events at Wembley were the Euro 2020 final against Italy and the England men’s match with Hungary.
Not present yesterday: anyone sticking a lit flare up their bottom, packs of aggressive young men high on rage dust storming the barriers or stealing wheelchairs, squadrons of Eastern European neo-nazis attacking stewards. Different entertainment choices, then.
Two things I noticed, which are either progress or not depending on your point of view: some fans booed the names of opposing players when they were read out by the match announcer, suggesting the kindling of tribalism that might either propel or poison the women’s game. Certainly if the men’s Premier League big four/six do want to dominate it, there will not be many Stewarton Thistles reaching finals in the future.
Also, more cynical fouling and diving than you saw a few years ago in women’s football. Rachel Brown-finnis, the former England international on co-commentary duties, noted with approval that Arsenal’s Katie Mccabe had “been clever” in going down for a soft contact.
Brown-finnis, and Sunday’s other pundits Katie Chapman and Fara Williams, have all replicated note-for-note that “yeah, no, as I say, obviously they’ll be disappointed” sort of ex-pro landfill punditry of which the men’s game has, with dishonourable expectations, become less indulgent in the Neville-carragher era.
All in all, women’s FA Cup football has its ideal home on the BBC, whose charter, ethos and unwillingness to bid for events that have expensive broadcast rights all contribute to coverage that must take in the social context rather than being purely about the on-field actions of the most effective football-kickers on the planet.
Do the next 50 or 100 years of women’s football bring equality? And does that mean a replication of some of the things that typify the men’s game in 2021: cheating, diving, grotesque sums of money, grotesque owners, the same handful of teams always winning, ethno-nationalism, hooliganism?
Or can something be nurtured that is the same, but different?
‘Of course I want to win – but I know I am part of something much bigger than that’