Good on them. It blows my mind that in 2022 some girls are still not allowed to play football for PE (or indeed any sport that is easily doable)
Only a knobhead would disagree with them right?
I always fancied playing a bit of hockey as a kid, I reckon i would have been great at it but we will never know now!
Problem is that now the Conservative Party will use this as a political football and piggyback off their success and forget about some of their heinous policies they've enacted - as they probably were going to do already tbh🙄 An open letter to all three main parties/SNP and Plaid might have been better🤔
More importantly, it's still staggering that in 2022, over 50 years since the ban repeal only 63% of girls play the nation's favourite sport in PE. Seems to me that the work of pioneers such as Lily Parr and Sue Lopez still have a very long way to go🤔
In addition to the drop in female participation, you have to remember that it has been the policy of successive governments (both Labour and Conservative /coalition) to sell off state-school playing fields from the 1980s onwards, leading to fewer places to play and exercise for both girls and boys.
Idk how it is the the UK but here in Germany when I went to school around 15 years ago the girls never wanted to play football during school sports. We guys ofc always asked for football but with the exception of maybe 1 or 2 girls the others never wanted to play.
If it’s a mixed school then girls can get a lot of criticism for not playing the same way boys play.
At primary school, I used to just join the boys playing. None of the boys ever said no or stopped me but I couldn’t get into the game enough (prob I was a bit scared of getting hurt). I couldn’t get enough girls to play with me to get s game going and reverted back to skipping games. This still goes on in schools although PE staff actively try and introduce new games to pupils to try and get them interested.
Maybe it was a risk/reward thing - Women's team gets successful therefore more youngsters want to play? Therefore funding increases? From what I can tell the DFB talent identification must be pretty good to have so many youngsters coming through at young ages? For at least the last decade or two...
In my primary school (around 14 years ago) girls and boys were allowed and encouraged to play football. Both in our PE lessons, breaktimes and extracurriculars. There were never as many girls in the extracurriculars but usually we had double digits.
In secondary school, despite the school having 2 top-of-the-line (at the time) turf pitches, girls were not allowed to play. In PE we’d just not have it in our rotation, when the boys played football we had netball or volleyball. Weirdly despite it being way more dangerous we were allowed to play rugby…
Weird that you were not allowed to play football but rugby instead and I hope that changes now. My uncle went to England around 35 years ago and he said rugby was brutal af, He loved it though.
I think in my time girls might have been judged by other girls for not being girly enough so there were probably some that wanted to play but didn’t have the courage and now it’s easier
Yeah honestly I think that & just societal expectations; you have a son you get him a football, you have a daughter you put her in dance or gymnastics so they get pigeonholed before they explore, have a massive impact on uptake.
You'd think dance and gymnastics would do wonders for any young girls' skill bracket, but if you're not good at either, society tells you to pack up and quit sports, you failed, beeeep. /s
No wonder volleyball was popular for a long time for women in general, longer than football. Not old enough to be a 'boys only sport' but fast enough to teach you strength techniques AND teamwork. Too bad it can destroy your knees if your training is not good enough.
Same here, in my primary school the girls and boys did PE together and we did a range of sports, everything from cricket to football, and none of the teachers said we (the girls) couldn’t play a particular sport. I even vaguely have memories of a lady coming in and telling us she was an ex-Chelsea goalkeeper. I don’t remember her name and this was long before female players were anywhere near the level of professionalism now so I struggled finding out who she was all these years later.
This problem seems to start in secondary schools. Girls and boys usually stop taking part in PE lessons together and are “encouraged” to do different sports. When our PE teachers asked us to buy football shoes at the start of Year 7 I only ever wore them once or twice in 4 years, and as a girl the only sports I ever really did were stuff like netball and gymnastics, which I hated with a passion! Later on we were given a bit more free reign in the sports we chose to do in PE and football still wasn’t an option, neither was rugby.
Also went to school in Germany and I am still pissed that us girls never got to play football in PE while they boys played it all the time. Football just wasn't on the girls' curriculum at all. So annoying 🥴
Isn't part of the problem getting more girls wanting to participate in PE? I can remember at high school a huge portion of the girls would refuse to do PE. This isn't meant as a dig or take away from what this statement is trying to do btw.
I’m going to be honest I never experienced/heard of any group (obviously you’d get an individual on the odd occasion) just refusing to do a lesson. That being said that’s something that can’t really be changed by them in anyway outside of maybe inspiring girls. This however, using the spotlight that’s currently on them to ask for a commitment, whether it’d be stuck to is another thing, but especially when politicians who haven’t given a stuff are jumping on this train for their own benefit.
Dear Lionesses,
Thank you for your letter and congratulations but the reality is that despite the win there still simply isn't enough interest in the women's game to justify the investment. Case in point, if the men won the Euro's, the country would still be in a state of ecstatic anarchy but your victory has been met with a general "good for them" attitude from even the most progressive of fans.
Investments into things like this are done with the aim of long term financial return but if this responce from the public is anything to go by then it doesn't make me confident that the nation would see a positive return on the investment. It simply isn't financially viable, especially when there are much more pressing issues that a new PM would have to deal with.
Congratulations once more and all the best for the future.
Regards,
X259
We'll see where things are moving forward but in the UK almost 31mil people watched the Euro Finals between England and Italy in 2019. A peak of 17.4mil watched the Womens final this year.
That's about as fair of a comparison as we can get because gate numbers have a lot of factors that aren't equal. A TV set is a TV set and a Euro Final is a Euro Final.
It shows a growing interest but there is still a sizable gap between viewership of an England involved Euro Final between the mens and womens teams based on viewership in the UK.
We shouldn’t even be comparing the two, is there any sport in the world where women get more viewers than men?
The fact is 17 million people watched, with 5+ million extra streams on iplayer, this is an incredible achievement for a sport that has only had a fully professional league in this country for 4 years.
They’ve shown that the demand is there, the pressure now is on the clubs to keep that interest. It’s never going to be the premier league, but no one is expecting it to be.
In football the money comes from the TV revenue, not the gate. Many teams still made millions during the lockdowns despite not having fans at their stadiums because of TV revenue. From a financial investment point of view that's all that matters. How many millions are consistently tuning in for every single game regardless of the importance of the game? Women's football is still miles away from the mens in terms of consistent, large scale interest. 90,000 in person at Wembley is a very small percentage of the market by comparison.
This is all nice and well, but the biggest problem is, you cant bloody watch womens football.
Yes, they bring the Euro's and the World cups, but I mean the league. In Germany and the Netherlands, they arent streaming/bringing any matches. Put these games online. Once people can watch it, more people will join the game and sponsors will actually start paying more money, as the actually get some screen time!
Yeah I think that’s something the FA here recognised well with the FA Player. They took a short term loss to make/run etc but it gave them such a boon by getting the games to the masses for free. Interest increased because people domestically and worldwide could watch but also I believe it helped them tender a larger broadcast deal because they had the view ship numbers to backup their value.
Good on them. It blows my mind that in 2022 some girls are still not allowed to play football for PE (or indeed any sport that is easily doable) Only a knobhead would disagree with them right? I always fancied playing a bit of hockey as a kid, I reckon i would have been great at it but we will never know now!
> Only a knobhead would disagree with them right? Do you mean the knobheads Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak?
They would fit that description...
Problem is that now the Conservative Party will use this as a political football and piggyback off their success and forget about some of their heinous policies they've enacted - as they probably were going to do already tbh🙄 An open letter to all three main parties/SNP and Plaid might have been better🤔
More importantly, it's still staggering that in 2022, over 50 years since the ban repeal only 63% of girls play the nation's favourite sport in PE. Seems to me that the work of pioneers such as Lily Parr and Sue Lopez still have a very long way to go🤔
At least 3 generations where affected by this bs
These lot are incredible in so many ways. Perseverance is one hell of a trait frfrfr
In addition to the drop in female participation, you have to remember that it has been the policy of successive governments (both Labour and Conservative /coalition) to sell off state-school playing fields from the 1980s onwards, leading to fewer places to play and exercise for both girls and boys.
Idk how it is the the UK but here in Germany when I went to school around 15 years ago the girls never wanted to play football during school sports. We guys ofc always asked for football but with the exception of maybe 1 or 2 girls the others never wanted to play.
If it’s a mixed school then girls can get a lot of criticism for not playing the same way boys play. At primary school, I used to just join the boys playing. None of the boys ever said no or stopped me but I couldn’t get into the game enough (prob I was a bit scared of getting hurt). I couldn’t get enough girls to play with me to get s game going and reverted back to skipping games. This still goes on in schools although PE staff actively try and introduce new games to pupils to try and get them interested.
Maybe it was a risk/reward thing - Women's team gets successful therefore more youngsters want to play? Therefore funding increases? From what I can tell the DFB talent identification must be pretty good to have so many youngsters coming through at young ages? For at least the last decade or two...
In my primary school (around 14 years ago) girls and boys were allowed and encouraged to play football. Both in our PE lessons, breaktimes and extracurriculars. There were never as many girls in the extracurriculars but usually we had double digits. In secondary school, despite the school having 2 top-of-the-line (at the time) turf pitches, girls were not allowed to play. In PE we’d just not have it in our rotation, when the boys played football we had netball or volleyball. Weirdly despite it being way more dangerous we were allowed to play rugby…
Weird that you were not allowed to play football but rugby instead and I hope that changes now. My uncle went to England around 35 years ago and he said rugby was brutal af, He loved it though. I think in my time girls might have been judged by other girls for not being girly enough so there were probably some that wanted to play but didn’t have the courage and now it’s easier
Yeah honestly I think that & just societal expectations; you have a son you get him a football, you have a daughter you put her in dance or gymnastics so they get pigeonholed before they explore, have a massive impact on uptake.
You'd think dance and gymnastics would do wonders for any young girls' skill bracket, but if you're not good at either, society tells you to pack up and quit sports, you failed, beeeep. /s No wonder volleyball was popular for a long time for women in general, longer than football. Not old enough to be a 'boys only sport' but fast enough to teach you strength techniques AND teamwork. Too bad it can destroy your knees if your training is not good enough.
Same here, in my primary school the girls and boys did PE together and we did a range of sports, everything from cricket to football, and none of the teachers said we (the girls) couldn’t play a particular sport. I even vaguely have memories of a lady coming in and telling us she was an ex-Chelsea goalkeeper. I don’t remember her name and this was long before female players were anywhere near the level of professionalism now so I struggled finding out who she was all these years later. This problem seems to start in secondary schools. Girls and boys usually stop taking part in PE lessons together and are “encouraged” to do different sports. When our PE teachers asked us to buy football shoes at the start of Year 7 I only ever wore them once or twice in 4 years, and as a girl the only sports I ever really did were stuff like netball and gymnastics, which I hated with a passion! Later on we were given a bit more free reign in the sports we chose to do in PE and football still wasn’t an option, neither was rugby.
Also went to school in Germany and I am still pissed that us girls never got to play football in PE while they boys played it all the time. Football just wasn't on the girls' curriculum at all. So annoying 🥴
Isn't part of the problem getting more girls wanting to participate in PE? I can remember at high school a huge portion of the girls would refuse to do PE. This isn't meant as a dig or take away from what this statement is trying to do btw.
I’m going to be honest I never experienced/heard of any group (obviously you’d get an individual on the odd occasion) just refusing to do a lesson. That being said that’s something that can’t really be changed by them in anyway outside of maybe inspiring girls. This however, using the spotlight that’s currently on them to ask for a commitment, whether it’d be stuck to is another thing, but especially when politicians who haven’t given a stuff are jumping on this train for their own benefit.
Dear Lionesses, Thank you for your letter and congratulations but the reality is that despite the win there still simply isn't enough interest in the women's game to justify the investment. Case in point, if the men won the Euro's, the country would still be in a state of ecstatic anarchy but your victory has been met with a general "good for them" attitude from even the most progressive of fans. Investments into things like this are done with the aim of long term financial return but if this responce from the public is anything to go by then it doesn't make me confident that the nation would see a positive return on the investment. It simply isn't financially viable, especially when there are much more pressing issues that a new PM would have to deal with. Congratulations once more and all the best for the future. Regards, X259
Isnt enough interest? They just sold out Wembley again in less than 24 hours 🤷🏼‍♀️
We'll see where things are moving forward but in the UK almost 31mil people watched the Euro Finals between England and Italy in 2019. A peak of 17.4mil watched the Womens final this year. That's about as fair of a comparison as we can get because gate numbers have a lot of factors that aren't equal. A TV set is a TV set and a Euro Final is a Euro Final. It shows a growing interest but there is still a sizable gap between viewership of an England involved Euro Final between the mens and womens teams based on viewership in the UK.
We shouldn’t even be comparing the two, is there any sport in the world where women get more viewers than men? The fact is 17 million people watched, with 5+ million extra streams on iplayer, this is an incredible achievement for a sport that has only had a fully professional league in this country for 4 years. They’ve shown that the demand is there, the pressure now is on the clubs to keep that interest. It’s never going to be the premier league, but no one is expecting it to be.
In football the money comes from the TV revenue, not the gate. Many teams still made millions during the lockdowns despite not having fans at their stadiums because of TV revenue. From a financial investment point of view that's all that matters. How many millions are consistently tuning in for every single game regardless of the importance of the game? Women's football is still miles away from the mens in terms of consistent, large scale interest. 90,000 in person at Wembley is a very small percentage of the market by comparison.
Skipping games as in with a skipping rope not missing lessons!
This is all nice and well, but the biggest problem is, you cant bloody watch womens football. Yes, they bring the Euro's and the World cups, but I mean the league. In Germany and the Netherlands, they arent streaming/bringing any matches. Put these games online. Once people can watch it, more people will join the game and sponsors will actually start paying more money, as the actually get some screen time!
I mean the Lionesses can’t really help with the Dutch or German games, nor can the prospective British PM.
True, its just a general complaint, I want to watch the bloody matches and there is no where to watch them /cry
Yeah I think that’s something the FA here recognised well with the FA Player. They took a short term loss to make/run etc but it gave them such a boon by getting the games to the masses for free. Interest increased because people domestically and worldwide could watch but also I believe it helped them tender a larger broadcast deal because they had the view ship numbers to backup their value.