“Kyra can I have your shirt please?” begs one sign, awash with green and gold glitter, at the front of the crowd at the Matildas’ Olympic qualifiers. A young girl holds it out, desperate for Kyra Cooney-Cross to notice it and oblige. Only Cooney-Cross does not just have one request for her jersey, there are swathes of young children with similar signs and beseeching looks.
It is a trend that has been slowly building for a while, having made its way over from men’s sport, where there is often little chance of even getting within 10 metres of a player, let alone taking home their jersey. But every now and then, a player spotted a sign and handed it over – creating a picture perfect moment that was destined to go viral.
However the proposition is often quite different in women’s sport. In the fortune-filled world of professional men’s sport, the camera zooms in to show a player’s jersey, embroidered with the date of the match and the opposition. If the shirt gets ripped or damaged during the game, another will be waiting for them to pull on. At each game, a fresh kit awaits and handing over a particular jersey is far from a big deal.
In women’s sport however, players often have just a couple of each of the home and away strips to last them the season. They often can simply not afford to hand them out to every small child with a glittery sign and puppy dog eyes, as much as they may want to make them happy.
The other issue for female athletes is their accessibility. While a sign made to ask Lionel Messi for his shirt may be caught on camera and prompt the star to seek out the child in the crowd, female athletes typically have long signing and selfie sessions after each match, meaning they are constantly confronted with these requests in a very real, face-to-face way that male athletes do not as often have to deal with. Whereas once these were opportunities to connect with fans and inspire the next generation, they have turned into constant demands on athletes’ time and property that will make it difficult for such sessions to be sustainable.
As fans of women’s sport, we have all become accustomed to this incredible access to the players. But we should consider this access a privilege, not an entitlement. The reality is – despite the great strides being made in professionalisation of women’s sport – a significant number of these athletes are still earning minimum wage. That extra hour they stay after a game each time is a sacrifice. It is time that could be spent preparing meals to get ahead of a busy week of training, completing a university assignment, or even working to make ends meet. They stay because they love the game and love the fans. But when those post-match sessions stop being fulfilling moments and start becoming constant waves of apologies for not being able to hand over all their worldly possessions, they will resent the time away from their lives.
As the mother of a sports-mad nine-year-old girl, I understand the urge of parents who encourage their children to create these signs in the hope they might score an incredible memento from the game. Sharing a love of sport – particularly women’s sport – with my daughter is one of the great joys of my life. My daughter even has one of Hannah Darlington’s Sydney Thunder shirts, which is her most prized possession.
With much-improved merchandise offerings for women’s teams in the current era, fans now have the option to purchase replica jerseys and some sports even offer customisation so everyone can get their favourite player’s name and number on the back. It is still a fantastic keepsake, but rather than being a burden on the players, it is actually a way to support them and their clubs.
Earlier this year, FC Copenhagen took the step of banning signs asking for shirts from games in the future, citing the negative effects on players and children. They are unlikely to be the last to instigate this rule. Making signs is a beautiful way to show support and is a time-honoured tradition of sports fans the world over. But for the sake of the athletes, the sports and the fans that love those moments of connection, perhaps it’s time to put that glitter to work in the pursuit of gentle pun-based humour and ditch the demands.
