In The 21st Century Many Women Are Serious And Knowledgeable Football Fans, But Until The Last Few Years That Was Far From The Case
In 2011 it’s quite usual to see a group of women turning up at a football match and being just as enthusiastic and knowledgeable as the males at the match, but this is a comparatively recent development. Just a couple of decades ago, women were still a small part of the crowd at matches and even then it appeared that a lot of them were had turned up with their man hoping that he would return the favour by going shopping with her the next weekend.
I became interested in football whilst at junior school, due to the influence of my neighbour – a teenage boy whose obsession with, and knowledge of, both football and cricket was amazing. Because of him I started to watch football on television (that long ago, this comprised only Match Of The Day late on Saturday night BBC and the F.A. Cup Final every year). Even this little amount of viewing disturbed my parents, who thought it was odd for a girl to want to watch sport, but I was a determined creature and my interest in the sport and my understanding of it grew quickly.
By the time I was in my teens, this was a full-blown obsession. Pop bands, movie stars…the other girls could keep them – my pin-ups were footballers. Even now I can recollect waiting outside the school hall, just about to take my Spanish exam, and whilst all the other girls were still frantically scanning through the language course book, I was nonchalantly flicking through a football magazine. (I didn’t pass the exam!)
As soon as I had left school and was earning my own money, I wanted to go and see some football live. My parents were distressed at the very thought, so I turned to a family friend and his son, who was a little younger than me, to be my chaperones. We went to quite a few matches around our area, visiting nearly all of the London clubs and teams like Brighton (a top division club in those days). At one point, my dad for some reason decided that he should make an effort and see if he could bond with his daughter and travelled with us on a trip to Chelsea. My eternal memory of the afternoon was being embarrassed about the bad language from the people around us that my father was having to be subjected to, and I never took him on our football trips again!
When I left home and moved to a new town with my employers, I soon got to know several guys who were all football fanatics. When the World Cup came around, four of us took it in turns to have a crowd round to our houses to watch all the relevant matches. I can recollect watching one World Cup Final sitting halfway up an open plan staircase as one of my friends had asked so many buddies into his little terraced property that it was just about standing room only! With the state of my vision today, I’d probably want binoculars or Laser eye surgery just to be able to see the screen now!
Anyway, there was a basic gang of five of us, and since this was in the era when there were nearly always matches on a Wednesday evening, we regularly went to a midweek match straight from work. Residing in the south eastern corner of England gave us a huge range of clubs to watch, from the First Division (as the top division was called before the days of Sky’s involvement) through to a decent level of non-league teams. It was extremely therapeutic to get to the middle of the working week in a not very pleasant job and then stand on the terraces and clear out pent-up stress or anger by shouting at the referee and applauding the players. (I notice football chants have never progressed beyond asking if the ref needs glasses? Nowadays, with so much money and sponsorship involved, surely punters should be asking if he needs Laser eye surgery? Actually, I’m surprised that the decision makers haven’t already signed up a sponsor who will fund Laser eye treatment as part of the deal!)
the years passed, the members of our little football group changed to other occupations in other areas and the football trips died out, although I sometimes tagged along to watch a local team with another mate who usually went on his own, and who was pleased to have company once in a while. Even that arrangement ceased when he moved to the north of England, and I went back to watching football on TV just like I had years ago. But the over commercialisation and non-stop saturation coverage on satellite television, together with the total refusal to make use of Laser eye or similar technology to improve decision making, soon made me come to dislike the game. I totally lost interest in it.
That is, until a couple of years ago. A close female friend has always hated football, and having put up with me telling her countless times that it is really different live to what you see on television, she finally decided that she would like to attend a match with me. I let her select what team she wanted to follow, as she had two local league clubs to choose from and then I bought the tickets. Realising that she had no knowledge of the rules, I discreetly outlined the referee’s decisions for her and pointed out things that she might not have seen. By the end of the match, she was desperate to go again. And, when time and money permit, we’ve been going ever since!
Post a comment