‘I get a lot of direct messages during a game and obviously I don’t read them,” Lucy Ward says as, in her role as one of the most astute voices in English football, she explains the ritual abuse that stalks her and other women working in the men’s game.
Ward’s consistent excellence meant that she was chosen as BT Sport’s co-commentator during the pivotal Premier League game of this season, when Manchester City blitzed Arsenal in April to virtually ensure they would become champions again. But rather than allowing Ward’s vast experience and knowledge of football to enhance the experience of watching such an important match, many men sent her venomous messages.
The 49-year-old, who was selected for England Under-21s at the age of 16 and played for Leeds and Doncaster Belles across more than a dozen years, did immensely valuable work helping young players such as James Milner, Aaron Lennon, Fabian Delph and Kalvin Phillips at the Leeds academy. Ward was the head of education and welfare at Leeds for 17 years and a job she loved ended only because her partner, Neil Redfearn, was sacked as manager of the men’s first team by Massimo Cellino, who then owned the club.
A poisonous campaign against her was exposed at an employment tribunal in 2016. Ward won her sex discrimination case and Cellino was made to pay her damages of £290,000. The money could not compensate for the devastation Ward suffered or for the fact that, as will soon explain, she had been quietly blocked from working for a club in football welfare and education.
After that ordeal Ward, who retains a balanced perspective and her good humour, can shrug off the stupidity of the typical troll. One day in 2021, for example, her commentary was praised by Gary Lineker, only for Ward to then open a direct message from a stranger who accosted her as “a biased, fat slag”.
The abuse, and the dearth of imagination, has not improved. When Ward occasionally reads a few comments after a game she “does laugh sometimes. I also look at the bloke and his profile picture might be with his daughter. I’m thinking: ‘Hang on a minute. That’s unbelievable.’ But when somebody says something horrendous I mute rather than block them. If you block them then in their warped mind they’ve won by getting some attention. I just think: ‘Let’s hope your daughter doesn’t meet someone like you.’”
Ward says: “When you’re talking for 90-odd minutes you’re never going to be perfect. I know people have put clips up of me saying stupid things – but I know if I’ve had a good game and, as the people I respect say: ‘Lucy, don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from about how to kick a ball.’
“The only thing that gets me is when they say: ‘How is she commentating on men’s football when she doesn’t know anything about it?’ I’ve worked in professional men’s football since 1998. I know exactly what these players are like. I know exactly what a training ground’s like. The authenticity is there.”
That authenticity stemmed from the essential work she did at Leeds – whether educating young footballers or looking after them when they were dealing with the promise of fame and wealth, floundering amid the brutal realties of academy football, having their contract cut or, in one case, being falsely accused of rape. Ward worked alongside women in various roles and they opened the minds of the teenage players.
“My main aim was to help produce a young man who left the academy with an all-round view of life and empathy for others. It’s such a tough environment that you need to have that softer side and at the academy we had women in key positions in sports science, physio and welfare. We were younger and all blond and we’d go to other clubs and [the opposition] would say: ‘Look at your blondes.’ Our lads would go: ‘What? Ah, you mean our physio? You mean Faith, you mean Lucy.’
“That was important because young footballers tend to know only two types of women – the matriarchal figure and a girl they used to meet in a nightclub but now see online. They learned to respect all women.”
Milner, a Premier League player at 37, having played elite football for 21 years while winning so much, and his wife have praised Ward for all she did. Delph and his mother remain close to Ward, and cite her calm authority and compassion as prime reasons for his development into a player who won 20 caps for England. There are others with similar stories but Ward pays as much attention to those who were jettisoned by football. But at Leeds she had to deal with a club owner in Cellino who, according to a statement made at the tribunal, had told a female employee of Leeds that women belonged in the bedroom or the beauticians. Cellino denied having said those words. But it was proved that, after he sacked Redfearn, he and others at the club felt Ward also had to be fired – purely on the basis that she and Redfearn were a couple. Lies were told about Ward, who fought her unfair dismissal on the grounds of sex discrimination.
Seven years have passed since Ward was completely vindicated and yet she still feels hurt that she was betrayed by a club she had loved since she was a girl. Even with truth on her side did Ward worry she would lose the case against a club as powerful, if chaotic, as Leeds? “Yeah. A lot,” she says.
“I had a conversation with someone who worked in my department, and I’d helped her get the job, and she was distraught and asking: ‘What’s happening [to Ward]?’ The next day I got an email saying I’d physically assaulted her. I was sat at home going: ‘What the fuck?’ This kind of thing happened all the way through. I WhatsApped her and she said: ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ That was used as evidence.
“There were many low points where I thought: ‘Am I going to win?’ I was lucky Nick Randall QC took it on as he’s a big hitter, based in London, and he probably has the best mind of anybody I’ve ever met. I was cross-examined for hours but when you’re telling the truth it’s easier.
“The foreman of the tribunal and the judge looked amazed that [Leeds] said I was a bully around the training ground and thought I ruled the roost. That made headline news around here and you don’t escape that. It felt like such a betrayal but people I considered friends have to live with their lack of integrity and lack of honesty. But I cannot get my head round giving everything to the club and that happening to me. I don’t think it’ll ever go away.”
The Football Association failed to support Ward and she feels disconsolate that some people who lied about her continue to work in football. The cost to Ward remains. “I went for a job at a club as a player liaison officer. The interview went really well. It was only a couple of months after the tribunal and the chief exec was really keen, and made out that he just had to speak to the owner and the job was mine. Me and Neil went on holiday and I didn’t hear anything. In the end, three days into the holiday, I got a voicemail saying: ‘Um, we’re giving the job to someone else. Apologies.’ He’d obviously gone to the owner and said: ‘She’s really good. She’s got this experience, blah, blah, blah.’ And the owner said: ‘We don’t want anything to do with someone who’s brought a sex discrimination case.’
“You’re not attractive to future employers. That was tough, realising you can’t do what you want to do, and what you’re good at, simply because you’d won a sex discrimination case. If it wasn’t for working for BT that season on women’s football, I don’t think I’d have left the house. It was that bad.”
In 2017, Ward was approached by Julia Caunt who was in charge of the Premier League’s education department. She asked Ward to “apply for a part-time role as education support manager which meant looking after people who did my role at Leeds at Premier League clubs. It was brilliant and saved me until I went full-time with the broadcasting in 2021.”
Is she still a Leeds supporter? “That’s a really difficult question. I loved Leeds – but that’s in the past tense as it’s very difficult to separate what happened with the people still there. I had an apology from Andrea Radrizzani [who bought Leeds from Cellino] but I look at the club through different eyes. The Leeds fans are brilliant with me and have always been supportive and recognised what me and Neil did for the club. But in my job now you can’t support any team. So it’s worked out quite well in that sense.”
The first time she co-commentated on a Leeds game “Kalvin [Phillips] was still there as well as some of my other kids. It was brilliant because I knew them inside out. We live in a place [in Yorkshire] surrounded by Leeds fans and they appreciated my depth of knowledge about those players.”
Ward has worked in broadcasting for nearly 16 years but it has been a long road to the point where she now commentates for BT Sport, Amazon, Dazn and the BBC. “My problem was twofold,” she says of her early years. “One was being a woman and not being the kind of ex-footballer where you could say: ‘Lucy Ward, 82 England caps.’ I was a decent footballer but I didn’t get to that level. I went to university and did lots of part-time jobs while playing football. So when it came to broadcasting, people would say: ‘What the hell is she doing here?’ I had to get over that barrier, which was horrendous.”
But Ward was talented, dedicated and she knew football inside out. When Amazon offered her the opportunity to move into Premier League football, she remembers: “I was frightened to death. I couldn’t turn it down but I was really nervous because I knew I’d get a little kick-back. But, at that stage, if you’d said to me: ‘You’ll be doing three games in a week, two Premier League games and a Champions League game,’ I’d have gone: ‘Absolutely no chance.’”
Ward has taken her chance and a few nights ago she co-commentated on the Europa League final between Roma and Sevilla. As she was working for DAZN in Canada there was “not as much pressure. Over here you have people going out of their way to think: ‘I’ll tell her she’s shit.’ That’s quite pressurised.”
She was in Eindhoven on Saturday to work at the Women’s Champions League final between Barcelona and Wolfsburg and this Wednesday Ward will co-commentate on the Europa Conference League final between Fiorentina and West Ham for BT Sport.
“I still get nervous in a good way but I do a hell of a lot of prep, which I liken to going into an exam. You come out the other side going: ‘Ah, they didn’t really touch on that, or this didn’t happen.’ But I’d rather be like that than wing it. My slant on football is looking at the tactics and trying to explain why it’s happening. I find that really interesting. So doing the research and commentary doesn’t feel like work at all. I love it.”
