EMPTY PROMISES
Failure to build on women’s World Cup feel-good factor is a national disgrace
IAN MAXWELL, chief executive of the SFA, stated during the summer that Scotland’s women taking part in their first-ever World Cup finals would be, and I quote, ‘transformational’. Try telling that to the 100 or so unfortunates soaked to the skin as Glasgow City won their 13th straight domestic title with a 10-0 win over Motherwell on Wednesday night, watching disabled fans having to be lifted down a slope to access a fenced-in, council-run ploughed field with no seating, no shelter and no obvious way for an ambulance to gain entry should a medical emergency occur.
According to one observer, Motherwell players even had to nick across to Wishaw Sports Centre, the facility the pitch was attached to, to get a chair for an injured team-mate to sit on. Hardly one step closer to lighting up the Maracana, is it?
Hayley Lauder was rested and named on the bench for City — only to get there and find there wasn’t a bench. Or a dugout. Or anything, really.
She was one of five City players at the World Cup with Scotland, surrounded by all that talk of legacies, new beginnings and inspiring little girls to follow their dreams. Maybe even believing it.
Going by her Twitter page, at least, the reality of life within a sport overseen by the drongos inside Hampden now appears to be hitting home.
‘Just won a league title in a public park at a sports centre,’ she wrote. ‘Not how I envisaged the game in 2019.’
Transformational times, indeed. Transforming the hundreds of thousands compelled to watch women’s football on national TV in the summer back into people who forget it even exists. All hard on the heels, of course, of transforming the traditional post-World Cup team debrief into a fractious, tear-stained mess kicked off by a head coach who had been out for a drink.
In August, long after Shelley Kerr had somehow kept her job after leaving players crying and allegedly threatening to quit following the team’s ignominious exit in France, the SFA announced it was staging a ‘comprehensive review’ of the women’s game.
Don’t hold your breath, mind you. Maxwell and SPFL crony Neil
Doncaster announced they were off to cost up VAR in December 2018.
Maxwell was also looking at rebuilding Hampden along the lines of Stuttgart’s Mercedes-Benz Arena.
The way things are going, the national stadium will be three feet under water as a result of climate change before we hear anything official on either of those matters.
Meanwhile, £400,000 of FIFA money from the women’s World Cup gathers dust. Look, it is perfectly laudable if the SFA do want to take time to work out the best way to utilise those funds.
The question is: Why has it taken until now? Scotland guaranteed that money through qualification 13 months ago. Wouldn’t it have been better to have a blueprint even halfway formed by the time the World Cup came around to build on the momentum?
Instead, just a couple of weeks before Wednesday’s fiasco in Wishaw, we had Glasgow City’s head coach Scott Booth despairing over the Women’s Scottish Cup semi-finals being scheduled for the same day as Scotland men’s Euro 2020 tie with San Marino — and attracting a grand total of 578 spectators.
Reasons have been given for all this. They don’t wash. The truth is that, while women’s football is building its profile worldwide, the buzz created by the World Cup here has almost fizzled into nothing.
Indeed, that tournament, which should have served as a launchpad, is actually coming across as a problem. It is the reference point for any casual observer interested in taking their interest further, but no one involved seems willing to talk about it in any depth. The good — or the bad.
One can only imagine it is because the subject of Kerr’s conduct, the ongoing elephant in the room, might come up.
The SFA made a pig’s ear of handling the fallout from that team meeting the day after the side had thrown away a three-goal lead over Argentina to crash out. Kerr’s dreadful interview with the BBC months after the event dripped with arrogance and proved devoid of contrition.
When she reappeared ahead of the Euro qualifier with Cyprus, further questions were stonewalled. Far from the manager issuing any kind of mea culpa, it’s simply not to be talked about any longer. Rather like the entire competition, it appears.
Before Glasgow City’s home match with Russian side Chertanovo in the last round of the Women’s Champions League, Sportsmail requested an interview with goalkeeper Lee Alexander, the idea being to publish an in-depth, 1,500-word profile piece ahead of the game.
Alexander was at the centre of a major global cultural event, saving a late penalty against Argentina to put Scotland in the last 16 of the World Cup only for VAR to rule that it should be retaken. It was raw, visceral sporting drama that made her a household name. How could you meet her and not bring it up?
Yet, Glasgow City insisted we’d have to deal with the SFA if we wanted to so much as mention what had happened on national-team duty. In the space of one call to Hampden, even though Alexander hadn’t been asked, it was made clear she wouldn’t be doing it.
We asked if the request could be made in any case. No one ever bothered calling back with an answer.
It may be churlish bringing it up now. Yet, it rankles after hearing Glasgow City’s club manager Laura Montgomery talk on Friday about how the media barely pay any attention even though her team are now on the brink of the last eight of the Champions League.
Some of us tried. And got nowhere. For all Montgomery’s desire for bigger marketing budgets, sport has to be sold on its personalities.
Yet, what has been Alexander’s public profile since Paris? How much have we seen of Erin Cuthbert or Caroline Weir?
All is not lost, of course. Rangers have committed to making their women’s team semi-professional next season. Celtic still talk about going full-time. A more competitive domestic league would certainly be a step forward.
Yet, as a joined-up product, women’s football seems a million miles away from getting its act together or even being able or willing to deal with the increased attention it supposedly desires. Right now, in Scotland at least, it is going nowhere fast.