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the script. It’s fabulous live sport. It sits comfortably with us as a Gaelic channel. It’s attracting people who wouldn’t otherwise come.

“It normalises the language if you’re hearing it week in, week out.”

What Iseabail noticed, that other channels had somehow missed, is that “appointment TV” is a crucial part of the schedule.

When everything else is available to stream on demand, live events are the only things that can bring regular viewers to terrestrial channels.

She said: “International sports rights are huge and that’s only going to grow. Only big, live appointmentto-view events count.

“As public service broadcasters, such as the BBC, are priced out of everything else, they need to have these events.”

And as women have been arguing until they are hoarse, sports are not taken seriously until they’re on TV.

Iseabail said: “Having a deal with a broadcaster elevates a sport and gives it status.”

She saw this at first hand watching a Scotland international with her daughters.

She said: “The first time the national team were in the World Cup qualifiers, they wanted to go out and buy the strips afterwards.

“I was sitting round the TV, with my daughters, being empowered by it.”

Thanks to Iseabail, BBC Alba broadcasts women’s football, rugby and shinty.

The station has the rights to the men’s shinty and, until last year, Iseabail did not know that women also played. The final of the women’s Camanachd Cup, between Skye Ladies and Strathspey and Badenoch Ladies, was the first women’s game shown on TV.

This year, there are plans to broadcast a couple more domestic matches and, Iseabail hopes, an international.

She said: “We want to grow women’s shinty and give it the same status as the men’s.”

Iseabail knows this works. She’s adamant showing live games does not damage the audience in the park. Quite the reverse.

She said: “We’re confident that we can grown it together. That’s what we did with Pro14 rugby.

“When we started showing those games, with Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby, they did not have full stadiums. Now you can’t get a ticket at Scotstoun when the Warriors are playing.

“You can see it in Ireland, their women’s football is phenomenal. There were 48,000 in Croke Park last year for the final. It takes time but with a broadcaster, it can grow.” the game is absolutely as valid as any male. Eighteen months ago, we did a call-out and found two great women.”

Now, Iona Whyte specialises in rugby and Megan MacLellan does the same for football and curling.

Encouraging more women to play sport is one of the main messages of today’s International Women’s Day and for Iseabail, it can’t be underlined enough.

“Sport is,” she said, “a force for good for girls in society. It gives them a place where they excel, socially and physically.

“It’s about how they perceive themselves in society and seeing athletes at the top of their game is fantastically healthy.

“For us as a broadcaster, it creates a parity for women that we just don’t have elsewhere.”

ISEaBaIL MaCTaGGaRT