One of the reasons that Rachel Corsie proved such a smash hit on our television screens this summer was the fact that she has opinions, and she is not afraid to share them. What’s more, she delivers them from an informed position.
What made her such an engaging pundit as part of the BBC’s coverage of the European Championships also makes her a fascinating person to chew the fat with.
Whether it is balancing the demands of captaining Scotland and Aston Villa at the age of 34 while making a splash as a pundit, dealing with the misogyny that is baked in when a woman gives her thoughts on the men’s game in front of the entire nation, or mulling over the reasons why the women’s game has yet to really capture the imagination of the match-going public north of the border as it has elsewhere, Corsie delivers her observations with the same acuity that led to her receiving the most favourable feedback of any analyst on British television at the Euros.
To many, her appearance alongside the likes of Davie Moyes to run her eye over Scotland’s performances in Germany came a little out of the blue.
“I think that went in my favour, because a lot of people were maybe saying, ‘who the hell is she?’ and then, ‘oh, I don’t mind it’,” Corsie said.
But in contrast to the old tropes heard in bars and the darker corners of social media, ones that Corsie has heard countless times before, she had neither been handed the gig as a box-ticking exercise, nor jumped the queue at the expense of a male pundit. It was more a classic case of an overnight success being years in the making.
“People who are doing the job should be good in order to do it, and we should be working to get better all the time,” she said.
“But they should be critiqued for what they are saying, not necessarily other things that are irrelevant.
“If you know football and you can analyse football, if you make the TV coverage better, then you should get the opportunity to do that.
“For me, it was something that I never had thought of doing, having the ambition to be on the TV talking about football, because when I was growing up it just wasn’t something you could aspire to.
“I didn’t necessarily even grow up aspiring to be a footballer, which is probably why I ended up not turning professional until I was 24. I always wanted to go to university and anticipated that I needed to focus on my studies, because that is how I was going to get a job that was going to pay the bills.
“Getting the opportunity for me was in some ways a little bit surreal, and when Pam [Corsie’s manager] phoned me and said it was on the table, it was something that I was really excited about.
“I knew it was a big opportunity to be live on the BBC. I had done lots of bits and pieces, so it wasn’t as if it was the case that it was my first time and it sort of went well.
“It started by being asked to go on BBC Scotland and talk about the women’s game, and maybe because I’ve always been willing to give my opinion, it probably attracted people to ask me to do these sorts of things.
“These were opportunities to maybe impress the people who make the decisions about who goes on what shows, and they notice that you articulate yourself well or give an opinion.
“From there, over time that has just grown and grown. In the last 18 months I’ve probably picked up a lot more, and that is probably just an evolution of the women’s game being on TV more. Then I started to get the opportunity to cover both the women’s and the men’s game, and it was just something I really enjoyed. I get a real buzz from doing it.
“I grew up obsessed by football, and I almost ruined it for my brother I think because I would be talking about it too much. At home, there is nothing on the TV usually apart from Sky Sports on a loop, and my partner will say to me, ‘can we turn that off, I’ve now heard about the latest signing for Plymouth or whoever for the third time’. I could just speak about it forever.
“It’s like anything, you just have to work on it. I obviously got good feedback from the Euros and have had other positive feedback on other bits and pieces I have done and the growing opportunities off the back of it.
“You need to work at it, get better, and analyse what you have done. It’s like a performance in a different capacity.
“There is always room for growth, and in some ways, it made me more uncomfortable getting so much positive praise, because you now need to live up that. I think with being Scottish, we probably prefer a wee bit less of that.
“But in saying that, it was nice to be recognised, because I see it with others – men, women, whoever is doing it – there is often a much higher volume of criticism than praise. We naturally live in a society where that is the case across the board.
“It was nice for me to be acknowledged as doing a good job, but I want to get better, and I hope that means that there will be other opportunities.”
What was striking about the reaction to Corsie’s punditry was that it largely ran against the grain. Where other female analysts have had their views dismissed or have received horrendous abuse – I’m looking at you, Mr Barton – Corsie earned praise for her insights and was seemingly judged on an equal footing to her male counterparts.
The start, she hopes, of a larger trend.
“In the broader picture, with all the positive praise, I hope that it does help just to hold people to account before they jump in and say it is a box-ticking exercise, because I think that’s quite a harmful thing to say outwardly,” she said.
“I live in the same society as we all do, I understand why people have had that thought and where the conversation comes from, but I also think it’s not very valuable to just keep talking about that, because I don’t believe it to be the case.
“I see the prep that goes into it. I see people coming off air and saying, ‘ah, I wish I had said that differently’ or have used a different word. I see people trying to get better.
“I think when you are sitting at home it is easy to sit back and criticise. Critique is fine, we all critique ourselves and others, that’s normal.
“I just think that sometimes what we project outwardly can be unhelpful, and there has been a lot of prejudice against women in football for such a long time.
“There’s been a lot of work that has been done to change the narrative for the better, for it to be fairer and a more honest reflection of the women’s game and just women in football generally, so that’s probably the one thing I hope does come from my own experience, I hope it reflects more broadly and transitions across something bigger.
“People having that opinion of women and saying things like they don’t want to hear women talking about the men’s game, or ‘how does she know anything about men’s football?’, you can’t probably win that argument with everybody.
“What you can do is show that you are comfortable talking about it. I am comfortable talking about the men’s game and the women’s game, because I watch so much of it. I have definitely, definitely watched more men’s football than I have women’s football.
“On top of that, I do women’s football every day for a job, and I have done for about 15 years. So, I play to a professional level, I know what the day-to-day looks like. I know what training looks like, the reality of changing formation in the middle of a game. I know what a player offers you. I know what people think on the outside and what is actually happening on the inside. I know all these things.
“I also know that people will want to knock you down, but it’s important to have people that you know to give you honest and genuine feedback.”
Not that Corsie thinks there is anything wrong with a little bit of healthy debate, particularly if that is with former teammate, friend and fellow pundit Leanne Crichton. As long as it is constructive and is centred upon the football.
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“I want to add value and show that I do know what I am talking about,” she said.
“We might not always share the same opinion, but it will be my football opinion that I will give.
“I am always open to having good discussions. I actually lived with Leanne Crichton for a while when we were both at Glasgow City, and I can tell you, we had it out a good few times in the living room over our own games or a game on the TV.
“We weren’t being nasty to one another, we just had a different football opinion, and we still enjoy that to this day.
“Men will be the same, but they won’t automatically think that their mate is an idiot and he shouldn’t talk about men’s football ever again.”
What of the women’s game in Scotland, then? It is hard to shake the notion that it has never quite taken off in this country as it has in some other nations.
Why, for example, were just 3068 people in attendance to watch Corsie captain the Scots to their record-breaking fifth win in a row against Serbia at Firhill last Tuesday night, a result that meant they secured a play-off place for the Euros after an unbeaten group stage?
“It’s very difficult to pinpoint,” she said.
“There has of course been a lot of growth, but one thing I do think is probably the external narrative. To give an example, the women’s national team has never won five games in a row, until we did it last week.
“I’ve personally been with the national team for 15 years. This is my 16th year. And I don’t necessarily feel as if there is an external momentum with the team. There’s not a feeling of, ‘the women’s team are doing well’, or ‘let’s all get behind them, let’s all come together’.
“I’ve felt that throughout my career that there has been that there, but we’ve never won five games in a row until now.
“There are obviously different reasons for that, and I realise that some of that came off the back of qualifying for the Euros and then the World Cup. Naturally, when you don’t qualify for the next one, then you have to ride that wave and get back to where you want to be.
“We are probably at the point now where we are moving in a much better direction, but it’s almost felt like we have had to prove something to the outside.
“That in itself can probably have a detrimental effect on things like the momentum and the growth of the game, people wanting to be invested in it and people wanting to come and watch and all these things. That is the cycle of revenue that helps grow the game and keeps it moving in the right direction.
“I think that is one part. If you look at Ireland, or even Wales, those two nations probably generate a lot of interest because the narrative around the team is probably a certain way that makes people feel they want to be a part of it.
“That is something that I saw in the US, and with teams that maybe have only existed for a year. I had it when I went to Salt Lake, and literally within the first five months we were selling out the stadium. They are the nation that set the bar in terms of driving revenue and knowing how to market things.
“I think we could do that better in Scotland.”
If that is the way to success though, is there a will, particularly from those in authority? Corsie gives a typically candid response to the question.
“I don’t think we have enough people in the game that want it to succeed,” she said.
“When I say that, I want to caveat that by saying the people who are in the game and who want it to succeed work tirelessly, they are doing an amazing job. But I don’t think there is enough of them.
“When you look at clubs that have a men’s team and a full academy structure, then a women’s team and maybe a half-hearted girl’s academy structure, I think that is almost always because the people at board level or decision-making level don’t actually care.
“I think you would do well to find any business in the world that was successful in selling a product if they didn’t care about it, and when it comes to the women’s game, we have people making decisions that don’t care that much about it.
“It’s never going be as good as it could be. It might be alright, it might be not bad, but that is not the best it could be, so therefore it is not going to generate great success.
“You might get a little bit of success, and maybe Celtic winning the league this season was an example of that, in that they have got a good program, but is it the best they can do? They have done well enough that it has had some success, but if people went in and had a look, is it the best they can do?
“I think that has maybe been the case too often in Scotland. I’m maybe being harsh here, and it might potentially be getting me in trouble, but take Aberdeen for example.
“They have a women’s team that is connected to the men’s team, but do you think the people making decisions on them truly, deep down, hope they do the best they can do? I’m not sure the resources and the experience the players are getting at that club would reflect that. And that is going to hold that back.
“One of the toughest things as well when you get into this conversation is that people drive you back around and say that it doesn’t generate the revenue.
“Firstly, it’s a little bit chicken and egg. It’s difficult to generate the revenue when we’re not trying to make the product the best it can be. Why would you want to pay for something that is a bit average?
“I have seen examples of women not being allowed to use the team gym, no matter what time. That is strange to me, what world are we living in? Imagine going to the gym at the end of the road and them saying that?
“How can we have a gym that the men’s team can use but the women’s team can’t? How are we living in that society? And women are often willing to work around others too, because that is what we have had to do.
“At Salt Lake, we were entirely paralleled with the men’s team. It’s the only club I’ve been at where we would all have breakfast in the same room.
“I honestly think that it benefits everybody. I really enjoyed it there, and they were a really great example of how to do things in alignment and in support of each other.
“I hope we can get there one day, I really hope so.”
