I’ve been following the Lewes Ladies, now Women for nearly 20 years, certainly longer than anyone currently involved with the Lewes Women so if you are expecting a misogynist rant about how women’s football is a load of old bollocks we’ll say goodbye now.
The title refers to the leadership of women’s football and the lack of courage to promote and represent the growth of a game that has three million registered members, so huge is women’s football in this country.
The independent report, this week, headed by Karen Carney was suggested at the behest of the Crouch Report into football Governance. It was felt such was the chronic need for reform in the women’s game the Crouch report would not be able to do the women’s football justice.
The Carney Report is a report commissioned with no leverage for action so had the scope to being a game changer for women’s football as an advisory influence for change. Karen Carney was set the task of being the figurehead to drive the report.
Labour’s Shadow sports minister, Jeff Smith, responded to news Carney had been appointed to lead the review by saying “This review must have free reign to be fully independent and challenge the existing structure where needed,”
There was no challenge to the structure. I have to say, what a damp squib.
Karen Carney- ‘The aim was to be punchy and bold to help improve the sport but we had to be pragmatic. We are not here to make headlines, we are here to make change. I could easily have made a recommendation that would have taken the focus away from everything else in the review but was not part of the thinking.’
This was a once in a lifetime platform to do exactly what in fairness the report partly brilliantly does, a scathing appraisal of the appalling women’s football funding. But also surely most importantly offer solutions.
You WERE there to make headlines. Headlines drive progress.
Sorry, but it is not difficult, futile perhaps? to write a report of observations. The need was a report to observe failings and offer solutions. The Crouch Report was a hard-hitting superb document that told it how it is. But was more of a case of fixing the poor governance of our football clubs and culture. In effect trouble shooting a very successful business and suggesting ways of making it more ethical and fair.
Karen Carney’s report, whilst highlighting the despicable inequality between treatment of players and their welfare in the men and women’s game and giving an authentic appraisal of the state of the game, offers no real tangible solutions where they are desperately needed.
It is the usual obvious relentless request of ‘we need more investment’. The bleedin’ obvious. But as usual, as pundits and journalists give Karen a metaphorical pat on the head for her effort, you sort of sense a sigh of relief all around that this report is nothing more than just that and the status quo will be maintained, almost as if everyone who takes any interest and the leadership of women’s football fear change.
An astounding 3 million women are registered to play football. They should be entitled to supreme representation to further their interests and enjoyment. Currently the leadership of women’s football fails to scratch the surface of decent representation.
To date it considered enough to moan about the lack of funding but present no positive solutions to kick start the game into the 21st Century through positive actions other than begging for handouts. Those three million women and girls deserve a body that is going to fight tooth and nail for the development of the game not adopt the currently preferred ‘woe is me approach.’ There seems to be a fear to upset the status quo of football rigidity in this country by fighting for what deep down is obvious, that the springboard to dramatically raise the profile of the game and bring in the investment the game needs maybe er…. some ideas…shock horror!
Maybe consider-
*Reset the whole current set-up from the onerous mimicking of men’s football and create a whole new fresh criteria for clubs, like the 100 in cricket.
Failing that, which will be failed.
*Force the clubs involved to play home games in their main stadiums, not just fob of their women’s team to play in second rate stadiums. How about demanding some of that industrial wealth of their brother clubs to try and realign the game.
*Tiers 2,3 and 4 of the men’s game are demanding more trickle down funding from big Premiership clubs, why are the sister clubs not doing the same, after all they are from the same clubs. You couldn’t write it.
*Set up a powerful pressure group to demand more Government funding of the game and funding from within the game.
There are loads of other and better ideas.
SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT. Drop this timid dipping of toes in the water. Grow some balls.
Personally I would see a whole new set up with regional teams like the Cricket 100’s which has been an innovative and amazing success for women’s cricket. But as the women’s leadership are not even knocking the doors down to get games played in main stadiums that would be well of the spectrum of aims.
Women’s football leadership needs to ask itself the question and do some soul searching as to why they do not have the intellectual capacity and grit and determination to launch a suffragette type movement to demand strategic and long-term reform of British football. We are repeatedly told about great rises in attendance figures in the Women’s Premiership. But herein lies the rub. Chelsea Women played four games 2022/23 season with attendances of under 2000, v Brighton not even scraping into 4 figures. The one game at Stanford Bridge was 38,000. Even in the Women’s Championship last season Sheffield United Women who get attendances in the 100’s pulled in 11;000 into Bramall Lane v London City Lionesses. Right across the spectrum women’s attendances are dreadful and have flatlined.
The rise is purely and simply and 100% down to large clubs condescending to let their women play in the main stadiums rather than the low grade secondary venues the women are fobbed off on, Brighton Women play Home games over 25 miles away in Crawley.
There is no real rise other than occasional scraps of using the main stadium to increase the image of a rise.
What is holding women’s football back from progress is a lack of fight from the leadership of women’s football to demand that under licence arrangements for inclusion in the Premiership and Championship all league home fixtures, only ten games, are played in the associated clubs main stadiums. Top women’s football would move from the dirty secret hidden away in moribund stadiums to the glitz and glamour of Premiership facilities. That is why a few thousand attend matches of the big 6 English clubs in the almost clandestine ‘women’s stadia’ and 30 to 40,000 attend the games in the club’s main stadiums.
* Average attendances would rocket.
*Demand from TV would rocket as would the revenue.
*Sponsorship would rocket.
A simple decision to do this would see an incredible rise in the revenue Carney highlights is necessary to drag top women’s football out of the doldrums.
I like Karen Carney and her passion and decency, and the report is good in that it highlights the deficiencies and gross unfairness of women’s football. But within 3 days it was not even in the top 25 stories on the BBC football news website. Simply because it offered no solutions. Karen says in ten years women’s football can be a billion-pound industry. The revenues from the top tier of women’s football are currently £32 million pounds and the only positive suggestion in the Carney Report is to equalise FA Cup prize money between the genders. Something my club have been already campaigning for. Currently £19 million FA Cup prize money goes to the men and £3 million to the women. Yes £11 million each is fair. So, £32 million plus an additional £8 million from parity of prize money is £40 million. Where are the ideas to get the other £960 million coming from? The report is that ineffectual.
A few people moot these ideas, has there ever been an easier solution to a problem and has there even been such a blazing weakness of people involved in something to ignore and not push for that solution?
The Rights of Fans. 