The rise of Women’s football

REGULAR readers of this column may remember that towards the end of last season’ I posed the question, ‘How often do you watch women’s football? My guess is that the result would be much higher if I asked that question in future.

Nothing to do with my column of course, but with the UEFA Woman’s European Championships, which attracted a television audience of 17.4 million for the final, plus over 87,000 fans watching at Wembley.

I loved the competition slogan, but it took me a couple of games to work it out. Although not intentional, it was in fact a little criticism of my column title for it said, ‘Women play football not women’s football’.

In other words, women play to the same rules and regulations as the men, there’s no separate game called ‘women’s football’.

It’s not always realised that there is one ‘core’ set of laws, and then there are modifications, which groups such as youth, veterans, disability, and grassroots football may apply.

These are things like the size of the pitch, the ball, the goalposts, the duration of the game.

Also, permission can be given for return substitutes (where substituted players can return to the team), Sin Bins (temporary dismissals), which you won’t see in professional football.

Until 2017 women were also on the list for which modifications could be made, but no longer.

There have been however some calls for the size of the goal to be smaller in football played by women but this can’t be done.

After witnessing the excellent goalkeeping during the women’s Euros, I think some women goalkeepers might feel insulted by the suggestion.

I must congratulate those women referees who officiated at the games and that includes the assistant referees who I thought were superb. I only wished the VAR decisions had been a little quicker.

Like English women footballers, women referees in this country have had to do some catching up.

They weren’t allowed by the FA to become registered referees until the women playing restrictions were lifted.

I remember Reading’s first woman referee, Wendy Prior. She refereed in the Reading and District League.

As a referee mentor I watched one of her early games.

She was in complete control and when we had our end of match chat, the only advice I could give her was that she didn’t need to blow the whistle every time the ball went out of play.

The fact that England’s Elite FIFA referee, Rebecca Welch, was one of the referees at the Women’s Euros shows how far they have come since Wendy’s ground breaking days.