“Can I play please?”

I recently listened to David Ornstein and Mark Chapman’s podcast ‘Future of Women’s Football’, (which is excellent and I highly recommend) and the topic discussed made me reflect on my own experience with sport growing up. In a nutshell, it is a completely different ball game to what it is now.

Caroline Weir, Steph Haughton, Lucy Bronze, Erin Cuthbert are all established professionals in the women’s game today. Gabby Logan, Eilidh Barbour and Laura Woods are established broadcasters, anchoring many prime time sporting events, including football shows on television and radio. And rightly so. They are all at the top of their game, on and off the field. But you didn’t always associate sport, particular football, with females.

Growing up to say I loved sport is an understatement. I didn’t come from a sporting family, yet somehow all I wanted to do was to kick a ball, go to the tennis courts, run around the cross country tracks and watch Match of the Day on a Saturday night with my dad.  I loved (and still do!) football.  I would kick a ball against the wall every day and I used to ruin pairs of trainers from playing football, that eventually my parents caved and took me to a sports shop to pick a pair of football boots. I was like a kid in a sweet shop! I had multiple football strips with my name on the back and also the names of my favourite footballers. I had football cards and sticker books.  I even had FIFA 2000 for the PlayStation 1. Yet not one single female footballer appeared on my shirt or in a sticker book or in a game. I didn’t even think girls played football. 

In the late 90’s/early 2000 as a 9 year old, my football hero was Henrik Larrson who played for Celtic FC. Two of the teams in the Scottish Premier League at the time, Dundee and Dundee United, were my local teams, so when Celtic played the teams at home, my dad and I would often go and sit in the away stands. The Celtic team would stay at a hotel in my town when they were playing either of the Tayside teams.  I used to go down with my Celtic football strip on, armed with an autograph book and wait in line for the players to come out before they would get on the bus to travel to the game. Seeing my football hero in the actual flesh is something every fan dreams of, and getting an autograph and a picture was the icing on the cake. However, I was often the only girl amongst many young boys waiting in line.

At primary school, I participated in gym classes as part of the curriculum and I was a member of the Netball team for the last 2 years of school.  I vividly remember there was a surplus of girls wanting to play in the netball team. You had to fight to get your bib to play in the first team. I was chosen to be Goal Shooter, but it was fiercely competitive, especially around tournament time. I was always determined to keep the bib and I did. We won the Schools Championship twice. But I also loved football. As there wasn’t a girl’s team, I trained with the boys, but I would watch from the side-lines when competitive games were played as I wasn’t allowed to play. I remember at the time, there were a few girls who were in the Scotland National Team Development squad. And whilst I was nowhere near as good as they were- I would have loved the opportunity to train to become better and practice. Playing with the boys you constantly felt inferior or not good enough. Nevertheless after school I used to go to the park and play a game with the boys and it was great- the boys didn’t care! We had a male junior football team in my town too and I would go to watch every home game with friends and their parents (all boys) and I loved it. We followed the team to Junior Cup success and I have so many wonderful memories, sitting in the stands, eating a pie and Bovril and cheering when our team scored! Football just brought me so much joy as a kid but I never had the opportunity to watch female footballers on any established platforms.

I started secondary school in 2003, and the netball stopped. There was no team. In fact, there were no girl’s sports team at all. Ironically we did have three female PE teachers at the time and looking back this was incredible. Similarly to primary school, we had our weekly PE sessions, but I often thought girls lacked interest in PE and put in minimal effort. And we still never got to play football. Surprisingly, in my early teenage years, there was a female football team in my town, but it didn’t stay for long because there was no demand for it. I played in the number 14 shirt- left midfield- yet was right footed. I remember going to training on a Saturday and having a game the same day. My playing career was hampered by injury to say the least, pulled Achilles tendon and hamstring to name a few!  As much as I loved to play football, I still didn’t see any female football on TV, so I often used to pretend I was on TV when I was in the park with the boys.

As my Highers approached, I wanted to choose Physical Education as one of my core subjects to study. I got accepted into it but excitement turned to dread quite quickly, when I realised in my class there was one other girl and me, and about 16 boys. A lot of the curriculum was geared towards the boys because they were in the majority.  The athletic standards were focussed to the boys for example, and although we had our own standards, you didn’t have too much time to adapt, but at least we got to play football! In my last year of school, I became a House Captain and was very vocal when it came to sporting events- particularly for girls, as there was limited participation interest. I just wanted people to see that females could play sport too.

One of my most vivid sporting memories of watching women competing in sport on TV was the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002. I was 10 years old, on a school night, I was allowed to stay up with my dad to watch Rhona Martin and the GB women’s squad winning the Gold Medal in Curling. It was an incredible moment to watch live and all these years later I am a curler – albeit not competing at Olympic level!! But the Olympics were every 4 years, (Summer Olympics in the intermitting 2 years) Other than that and Wimbledon, I can not remember as a child, that I would see women competing in sport on TV nor see a female presenter anchoring sporting programmes. There was simply no women’s sport broadcast on TV. 

In contrast to the summer of 2019, we had the Women’s World Cup on the BBC, Women’s Netball World Cup, and the Women’s Cricket to name a few events being broadcast and reported on mainstream TV.  This was uncharted territory to say the least and one I was completely unfamiliar with this exposure growing up. Young girls will now be able to see these players within these sports and aspire to be like them.  At the Women’s World Cup, (which was also the first time Scotland’s Women have ever qualified!) Gabby Logan anchored the games, assisted by ex players Alex Scott and Hope Solo, and the majority of games were shown on BBC, which meant it was accessible for everyone to watch.  There were over 1.12 billion people who watched the World Cup, which highlights women’s sport is popular and should rightly be given this platform.

I strongly believe ‘you cannot be, what you cannot see’, and for young girls especially, it is crucial we keep promoting and make sport as accessible as possible.

Young girls are now able to regularly watch women’s football. There are established professional women’s football leagues and games are regularly aired on television. Grassroots girl’s football is continuing to grow.  FIFA even released a Women’s World Cup game in 2016. Kids will be able meet their heroes, have their favourite players names etched on their football shirts, and perhaps queue up for a photo and autograph such as Erin Cuthbert and Toni Duggan. 

I could not be more delighted that women’s sport now has the platform it has always deserved. This is one of the reasons I want to pursue a legal career in the sports field.  I want to make a difference in women’s sport.  I am huge advocator and whilst, I understand there is still have a long way to go, I am so glad it is a different ball game now, and we just have to keep it up!