There are rare moments in life that you know you will never forget, even as they are happening. Moments where, just for a blissful evening, everything in the world feels truly, wholly good, and for a minute, nothing else really matters because you are reminded that sometimes, human beings really are alright. For me, watching England win the Women’s Euros was one of these moments.
You could be forgiven for thinking I’m being a touch dramatic, but I think anyone who knows what it is to really really care about a sport knows that I am not. Emotion is built into sport – if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t bother.
Football has been in my life for as long as I can remember. I have a father who never saw my gender as a limitation on his paternal duties to raise me an avid Arsenal fan – I think if I had crawled out the womb an orange alien he still would’ve dressed me in an oversized Thierry Henry shirt and preached me the genius of Arsene Wenger.
I was never given much opportunity to play football in school, but at age 10, I joined an out of school team (up Bristol Ladies’ Union!) and spent my Tuesday evenings and Sunday mornings with many of the same girls I sat in class with all day, being shouted at by a totally passionate and mildly terrifying Scouse coach. A lifelong love of the beautiful game was instilled.
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But women’s football had little recognition. As a young female player, it was difficult to find representation. It’s not that women’s football wasn’t there, but more that nobody seemed to care. After the Lionesses’ historic victory yesterday – which was watched by 17.4 million people, making it the most watched TV programme of the year - Alex Scott took the time to criticise sponsors who had shunned the women’s game for years. “You’ve missed the boat,” she told them. But it is so satisfying to know that these women went out and did it anyway. They are extraordinary.
Manchester occupies a special place in the footballing world – but this is as much true of the women’s game as it is the men’s. After the FA banned women’s football in 1921, deeming the game ‘unsuitable’ for women, the Manchester Corinthians Ladies Football Club became a trailblazer in fighting to get women back onto the pitch. It’s impossible not to think that for those women, and thousands of others, yesterday’s victory was elating but bittersweet. We have finally got there, but by God has it taken a long time. We cannot let women’s football down again.
In my life, I have had many conversations with men about women’s football. A good portion of them have gone along the same lines: yes it’s wonderful that the ladies are playing in a tournament and you know, I really would watch it but it just isn’t quite the same game is it. This is b******t. It is exactly the same game.
I even went on a date once where a man sat across the table from me and said that he thought the women’s team were like, championship standard at best, and so therefore the games were just a bit boring. Putting aside the fact that millions of people across the country actively support and, in many cases, dedicate a good portion of their lives to championship and lower league football, so really if that’s the excuse you’re giving you most likely really are just sexist - after yesterday’s nail-biting final, I dare anyone to tell me that women’s football is boring ever again.
The criticism these women face is immense. You only have to look at their Twitter mentions for all of 10 seconds to see them being sexualised, objectified, poked fun at, and patronised. Women are held to impossible standards – it can sometimes feel as if critics are desperately looking for something to pull them down on – to go aha! We knew it! Women really can’t play football and you proved that by playing one lower tempo game, so really please just scuttle off back to the kitchen and leave kicking a ball around to the men.
I don’t think I could count the number of, quite frankly, slightly boring men’s games I have sat through as part of my passion and suffering for Arsenal Football Club – sticking through ups and downs is part of the game. But it can feel that in order to ‘prove themselves’, women cannot afford to put a foot wrong. What they have achieved is nothing short of exceptional.
So yes, the moment the final whistle went at Wembley and the country erupted after what can only be described as a thrillingly exhausting 120 minutes of world class football, clinging to friends and strangers in a perfect moment of breathless, pure joy will with all certainty live in my memory forever. These moments of collective togetherness which are increasingly far and few between are important – they remind us that some things transcend almost everything else.
But there must be a legacy. When I was in school, I played football in PE for one term, once – the boys played it every year. I still notice that there is always a tone of surprise when I tell male friends I love football, and I am not maliciously, but subconsciously excluded from office conversations about the game.
I don’t think it can be much clearer – women play football, women are great at football, women love football. This is a real opportunity for us to change the culture that surrounds the sport, to make it more inclusive, and to ensure that the next generation of women have a better experience of what is a truly beautiful game.
Football has come home. And it’s England’s amazing women who have carried it.
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