The trouble with women’s football…

The England Women’s team has won another trophy but there are some who want to diminish that victory …

There are three things that I’ve never heard said on social media. Well, more than three things, but most would be utterly irrelevant to this article, so let’s stick with the three I had in mind.

I’ve never heard Jonathan Edwards tell Inessa Kravets that he could “make 1000 jumps against her and beat her 1000 times” implying that male triple jumpers are somehow superior to the female type, you know, the ones without the proper sponsorship and best coaches, because they aren’t in possession of a penis. (Caveat, in the 1990s everyone who had a penis was a male, so don’t start on that one.)

I’ve also never heard Alex Coles, English rugby’s 6’7”, 18 stone flanker, call out the women’s rugby team, saying that he could smash them all into whatever next realm of reality happens to be waiting for us on the other side.

Nor have I once heard Frank Bruno say that he could “knock the shit out of Nicola Adams” if he wanted to because women’s boxing is crap.

The main reason is that these are three nice people, even Jonathan Edwards (and he used to be a vicar) who can plainly see the difference between women’s sport and men’s sport and enjoy them for what they are.

It’s why most of us aren’t walking around every day sneering at the neighbour’s washing line and claiming that vests are better than bras or that the condom we used last night would stop a pregnancy better than the tampon our wives had to pop in this morning. It’s because we are sane and don’t want people to point at us in the street warning everyone that we’re a bit mental.

Howay the Lasses - NUWFC Land Former Lioness

Step forward Joey Barton. Joey, and many men like him, seem to be unable to comprehend that there are women’s and men’s sports and that they’re enjoyable in their own realm. That’s why Wimbledon has two finals, why Laura Davies never played Seve Ballesteros and why my wife hates playing Swingball against me in the garden after a couple of beers and a barbecue.

We don’t need mocking commentary during every single women’s game. We don’t need to hear that “Shearer would’ve scored that” or “Shilton would’ve caught that in his cap”, through a gurgle of a Special Brew, from the types of men who have a Union Flag as their profile picture and a poster of Tommy Robinson sellotaped to the back window of their Korean car, just above the British Bulldog sticker.

It never ends well for men like Barton, they are always proved wrong. Remember Bobby Riggs? An American former Wimbledon and US Open tennis champion who openly and consistently stated that the women’s game was inferior.

In 1973, at the age of 55, he challenged Billie Jean King to a ‘Battle of the Sexes’ match in order to prove his point, which he duly lost in straight sets, which confirmed what many people at the time had thought anyway, that he was a sexist prick whose mouth was connected to the wrong part of his anatomy. But credit where credit is due, being known as a sexist prick during a time when Bernard Manning was considered suitable family viewing took some doing.

Yet here we are in 2025, having witnessed an England team win the Euros back-to-back, the first British team to do so and the first British team to win a tournament overseas, with some men acting like it’s an achievement up there with having just finished a particularly large pile of laundry or got the ironing done before bedtime.

“But it’s football and the standard is rubbish!” I hear those of you who have just peeped out of the window to check your poster hasn’t fallen off in the heat, shout.

Granted, the women’s game hasn’t got the history that the men’s game has got and nor has it been ingrained in the psyche of little girls for the last 100 years, like the men’s game has for boys.

The reason for that? Men. Men like Joey Barton and Bobby Riggs, except at that time those types of bigots were in charge of the Football Association.

During the first World War, women’s football flourished as political and social norms were temporarily pushed aside. Women were working long, hard hours in dirty, hot munitions factories to support the men on the front line and, in their spare time, were playing football in front of sizable crowds.(If you want to know more, I suggest you go and see the excellent play ‘Wor Bella’ by Ed Waugh, which tells the story much better than I ever could).

When the war ended, the world needed to look normal again, no room here for any progressive social upheaval or an opportunity for positive change. Women under 30 wouldn’t get the vote until 1928, so what happened next was hardly surprising.

In a nutshell, when the men returned from war social norms were put back into place, the women were thanked for their efforts, then moved aside and told to go back to normal women’s duties, like cleaning things, bringing up children and getting married.

Millions of women from the munitions factories, along with those who had covered other traditional male jobs, like railway guards, police officers, firefighters and more had their employment terminated and were basically told to go back to being women.

At the time, this meant ‘be reliant on your husband's wage’, ‘have the dinner ready when I get in’ and ‘make sure the bed’s warm with you in it’. Their independence was relinquished in the blink of an eye and the home-based heroes of the war were put in their place, or knocked out of it, depending on your point of view.

When men’s football resumed in August 1919, the Football Association banned women over 11 from playing in mixed teams with men and, in 1921, banned all women’s football from FA affiliated grounds stating that “the game was unsuitable for females and shouldn’t be encouraged”.

Basically, women’s football was too popular and didn’t sit right politically with the male dominated hierarchy. The ban was in place until 1971, the year when Malcolm MacDonald would be Newcastle United’s top scorer and a certain Alan Shearer was already taking his first steps.

So, when such intellectuals as Joey Barton tell the world that he could smash 1000 penalties past former England goalkeeper Mary Earps (he couldn’t by the way) he probably needs to think long and hard about the damage that idiots like him have done to the sport over the last 100 years.

When the ban was lifted in 1971, little girls didn’t dream of being footballers - it had been knocked out of the female psyche many years before. Those who dared to show an interest would quickly have that sort of nonsense bullied out of them. The world was far more blue and pink then and, if you didn’t pick the right side, you’d be in all sorts of trouble.

It wasn't until the 80s that the first signs of green shoots gave the go ahead for girls to show an interest in the sport, and the early 2000s - more than 30 years after the ban was lifted - when the FA opened the first Centres of Excellence for Girls.

Yet, the women’s team have won more in their short existence than the men’s team have ever, in fact they’ve won more in the last four years than the men’s team has ever.

What’s more, it seems that they’re starting to get their fans back, their success back and are giving those ladies who were forced to stand aside over 100 years ago, some of their pride back. It’s turning full circle.

I wonder what those lasses from way back then think of that? Oh, and I can’t imagine what those First World War bigots from the FA would think if they knew that, while the ladies have dared to rely on a Dutch manager to win everything, the men have …heaven forbid… gone German. And they’re still crap. I suppose they’d look on the bright side and say that at least the German is still losing. They were progressive thinkers, after all.

Women’s and men’s football aren’t there to be played off against each other, they’re there to be watched and played and enjoyed independently by everyone involved.

If you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch it. But don’t be like Joey.

Steve Blakeney