When the BBC introduced their coverage of this years' Womens FA Cup final the presenter, who I would imagine was attending his first ever womens' football game, immediately announced that the womens game had never had it so good.
To back this opinion up he pointed out the record attendance present in Nottingham for the fixture and England's qualification for this years' World Cup finals in China.
Both factually correct but do they combine to make the original statement a fact?
The trouble with FA Cup and World Cup finals is that these events will always generate a level of interest inordinately higher than the week in week out grind of the season as a whole.
These are also, however, the only events the heavyweights of the media can be bothered with.
It is easy for the BBC to produce such a bland statement. For all the interest they take in womens football, the FA Cup final and certain England internationals, they probably do think everything in the garden is rosy.
Over 20,000 turn up for the cup final and England have a team that does not embarrass the broadcaster the odd times they deign to put them on our screens.
So no wonder the BBC believe everything is fine and dandy as far as womens' football is concerned.
The truth of the matter may be somewhat different, however. The real strength of womens football is not really to be measured by national and international finals. It is to be measured in the health and vitality of the clubs operating at all levels of the game throughout the country throughout the year.
At grassroots, a favoutite word of the games' ruling bodies, things still look good. There are more players, clubs and leagues than ever before.
Boundaries are being broken down all the time thereby making access to the game and acceptability in playing it far more widespread for girls.
This is all that is needed to ensure the sports' popularity. Once girls are playing football to any degree this is the game that will become the most popular.
It is simply the most enjoyable to play.
So local clubs can expect to continue to flourish. At that level interest is more important than money and with interest at an all time high everything is set fair.
Ultimately, however, if the game is going to progress and really thrive then it needs to truly establish itself on a secure footing higher up the structure and this is where the signs are ominous.
Feeding players to the England side that is currently doing so well is the National Premier League.
As the title says this is a league with teams spanning the length and breadth of the country and at this level running costs are significant.
The clubs, however, have none of the sources of revenue that their counterparts in the mens' game have.
Crowds tend to hover around the 200 mark, charged at a few quid each, so there is no meaningful income from gate receipts.
Sponsorship is devilishly difficult to come by and usually only of a short term duration.
Crucially there is absolutely no interest from television regarding the run of the mill league season.
Denied money from these sources the game at the top level is basically a reflection of which of the mens clubs give most support to the womens teams affiliated to them.
Arsenal give the most support and have given it the longest and this is highlighted by Arsenal Ladies' dominance of the game.
Charlton Athletic come next with Everton also benefitting from decent support from their "parent" club.
This situation brings its' own pitfalls, however. All womens' clubs that receive significant support in this way are in constant danger of finding the support removed. Obviously when this happened the consequences are severe.
In the summer of 2005 Birmingham City pulled the plug on financial support to Birmingham City Ladies and the latter was immediately in danger of extinction.
The team lost almost an entire team that summer and faced the prospect of rebuilding hastily on dramatically reduced income before the start of the following season.
The club bounced back superbly from this setback but when the same thing happened, even more dramatically, to Fulham WFC last summer the fallout was more damaging.
Fulham had even made their ladies team professional at one point but, frustrated at the lack of progress towards making the game as a whole professional, they decided to withdraw their backing completely.
Fulham WFC had to start completely from scratch and although they managed to patch together a team for the start of this season they suffered an emphatic relegation. It remains to be seen if the club can consolidate at the next level down and then re-establish themselves.
This summer it is the turn of Leeds United Ladies who, obviously, no longer get any backing from Leeds United.
To be fair nobody gets any money from Leeds United, do they?
With the sponsorship deal Leeds United Ladies had struck running out the club immediately found itself in serious difficulties.
The club has instigated all manner of fundraising ventures, basically of the kind your local village cricket club survives on, in the hope of a stay of execution and a more permanent solution turning up.
Of course Sue Smith, Leeds' highest profile player, was sitting in the studio at the FA Cup final listening to the "fact" that womens' football is in such great shape faced with the possibility that the team she represents might not exist come the start of next season.
A little lower down the league structure Southampton Saints, one of the great names from the 1970's and 80's, have also been abandoned by Southampton FC and ended the season relegated and barely able to field a first team.
Perversely even being successful can be damaging in womens football. The Arsenal manager, Vic Akers, bemoaned the fact that competing in the UEFA Cup had cost the club around £30,000 this season.
Whether this figure was offset to any great degree by his side winning the competition I don't know but his words sound a real warning to Everton Ladies who have also qualified for next years' competition due to Arsenal's success.
Mo Marley was quick to hope that Everton FC will help her side out if there is an additional expense attached to playing in Europe but there are never any guarantees.
It is hard to hold out any genuine hope that any mens club will continue to support womens' football if their own status is under threat.
Even though it might only cost around £90,000 to fund a team in the Womens Premier League for a full season, a weeks wages for plenty of male footballers, this will be viewed as vital money by a club facing relegation from the mens Premier League.
My major interest in the relegation battle in the Premier League this season was in contemplating how the possible relegation of Charlton Athletic might affect their womens' team.
Of course Charlton did bite the bullet and we shall have to wait and see if this has any major effects on Charlton Ladies.
We must hope not. Charlton have a greater sense of involving the community than most clubs and have invested in a solid infrastructure for the womens team which would make reduced support for the ladies a genuine waste.
If the club cannot secure a quick return to the Premier League, however, who knows?
Therefore the state of womens football in England does not look quite so rosy as a first glance might suggest.
I have banged on about tv time and again on this site and to some extent I cannot comprehend the continued absence of regular coverage somewhere on the myriad channels in operation.
After all everything else seems to get covered. No matter how stupid, pointless or complete a minority the sport may be.
Until something in this line is secured and a regular, reliable source of income generated for the top flight clubs then there will always be this uncertainty concerning the survival of these clubs.
More needs to be done to make womens football attractive to television, and potential sponsors who operate on the same principles as tv companies when contemplating investment, however.
The biggest drawback for womens' football is probably the venues.
Shunted out to various non league grounds the facilities are generally poor and the pitches dreadful.
Not only do the surroundings give the games a feeling of lacking quality before they start they are hardly designed to encourage people to actually go and watch.
They do not lend themselves to outside broadcast units either.
The pitches can also be of such a poor standard that they make a decent game of football basically impossible.
I went with a friend to watch Everton play Charlton Ladies at the end of last season for a game that would decide who finished runners up in the league.
Everton won 1-0 but the game was extremely poor. My friend was not impressed but made the pertinent observation that Argentina and Brazil would have been hard pressed to do any better on the pitch that the game was played on.
This season when Everton clinched their place in Europe they did so on what amounted to a park in Widnes.
The pitch was not bad but the venue was still baffling. With the mens' season over and Goodison Park doing nothing for the next couple of months why couldn't the game have been played there?
With any kind of promotion a game at Goodison would surely have attracted a decent crowd. This would have made the club some money and also provided the womens' game as a whole with better exposure.
And even if it didn't it would at least have allowed some of the countries' best players the opportunity to play at one of the countries' top grounds rather than a park in Widnes.
Similarly when Arsenal Ladies played a game at the Emirates recently they did so behind closed doors.
What was that all about?
It's as though they don't want the game to catch on.
Lastly the FA need to be more pro-active in securing greater financial support and exposure for the womens' game.
At least all the England Ladies internationals will be shown on tv after the latest round of bidding for the rights to show domestic football but it is unlikely the clubs will feel much benefit from the deal.
The FA will no doubt argue that the money will help support the various England womens teams now in existence but it is the clubs who produce the players for these sides and many of them need help.
All in all the future of the womens' game in England remains somewhat precarious. If the England team was to enjoy a successful World Cup this would surely help raise the profile of the game still further.
Even if England were to win the World Cup in China, however, the players would still be coming back to play their football on a collection of non-league grounds and none of them would be seen on a tv screen, actually playing, until the next England international came around.
So once again we are back to where we started, really.
No comments:
Post a Comment