If you have not seen women’s football, go and give it a chance
Ilooked at the crowd at Wembley last Saturday: 77,768 people appreciating the England national team, appreciating women’s football, during the 2-1 friendly defeat by Germany. I thought about my baby girl, Lucia: too young to kick a ball, but with so many more opportunities than I ever had.
Those 77,768 at Wembley now have a choice of 11 games in the top two tiers alone as part of Women’s Football Weekend. Among those are the Merseyside derby and the north London derby. Four of those fixtures will be played at men’s stadiums.
To understand what this weekend means, I want to take you back to my childhood. I was the only girl in my town who played football. When my younger brother joined Garston Boys, I would go and watch, racing after the balls when they rolled down the hill, dribbling them back in the hope they would ask me to play. One day, they did. I fitted right in. I was accepted.
It was not until we started thumping teams, and I was getting goals and assists, that people noted I was a girl. The opposition parents – the adults – did not like that I was a girl. They said I should not play.
This is a boys’ sport. Go play netball, hockey. Do something different. It did not affect me, but some of the parents were quite hostile towards my dad.
Teams started refusing to play against us. I had to join another team from the other part of town. Then the same thing happened. My dad would have to tell me, all over again, and promise to try and find another team. I remember crying, not understanding why I could not do something I loved. It was his idea to find a girls’ team.
Before then, I had no idea women’s football existed. I played for Wembley Ladies, paying a £70 yearly fee, while working in Mcdonald’s and a dogs kennel. I was playing for England and I wrote to adidas. All the men had boot deals and I hoped they could help me, but I got a letter back that said, sorry – we do not support women’s football.
My vision was to leave England
It is so much better than when I started playing. It is technical, fast-paced and teams are well coached
because the game was not even respected. I wanted to be a professional. And if I could not, I probably wouldn’t have played any more. In England, I was only training two nights a week, from 8-10pm. It was not enough.
England was playing catch-up to America. Arsenal were part-time. They would give jobs to some players within the club structure: washing the kit, coaching, training to be a physio like Jayne Ludlow, the Wales manager. The year we won the quadruple, we had our own training programmes from England, because Arsenal were not in the place to hire an exercise scientist qualified to write those. We England players were put on a full-time training programme that we would carry out by ourselves, and we would keep a log and report back. It was all on us individually to be better as a team.
I made a bit of a name for myself after the 2007 World Cup and I was asked to go on The Jonathan
Ross Show. He was asking me, “Do you play with the same number of players? Do you swap shirts?” It was cringeworthy and I said to him, “Would you ask the same question to a man?” At that point, that was all men would joke about when it came to women’s football.
“Do you swap shirts? Do you shower together?” I was sick of hearing the same comments. You just were not valued or respected as a female footballer. This weekend, the likes of Jordan Nobbs, Fran Kirby, Ellen White, Steph Houghton and Leah Williamson will reap the benefits of my era. We have fought for all this. They are all full-time professionals. It is fantastic to see where the game was all those years ago and where it is now.
The product is so much better than when I started playing. I can understand why people probably were not as interested back then because it was a lot slower. It would be, as you were training twice a week and holding down a job. It was a hobby for a lot of us.
Something needs to happen after this weekend, too – but I do not have the answer. It is still important that we play in big stadiums and that you promote and push women’s football. The players are accessible after the games and it is vital we keep that. The players have a duty to encourage girls to have a vision.
There are jobs for women in football. When I was growing up, you did not see any women involved – not as doctors, or physios, or players, or journalists. Now, you do. My message, if you have never seen women’s football, is go and watch it, and do not compare it to men’s football. They are different entities. Men are faster, fitter and stronger, but you can enjoy women’s football. It is still technical, fast-paced and teams are well coached.