Today I will watch live television coverage of women playing rugby in the Six Nations. On Monday there will be a great documentary profiling a female Welsh football icon. But just 10 years ago I was being told: “For f**k’s sake luv go and do the dishes” for daring to be a woman who wrote about sport.
I was reminded of this as a Facebook memory popped up this week in which I was laughing off the rants of this anonymous keyboard warrior back in 2012. Laughing off in public that is. In private the taunts stung. Even though they were always so unimaginative – when not being told to wield the Fairy Liquid, Dave91648723 and his ilk would always be telling you to Make the Tea. These guys didn’t want us to leave the kitchen, let alone sit in a stadium.
It’s hard to counter criticism about the one thing you can’t change – your biological sex. And that’s what they were objecting to, a female encroaching on what they considered to be a male domain.
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Because I must have been doing something right where the actual sports writing was concerned. Without wanting to trumpet-blow, by 2012 I’d won two Welsh and one UK-wide sports journalism awards and got a publishing deal for my first rugby book. I’d also produced stacks of sports radio documentaries. And I had plenty of support and mentoring from men whose opinion I valued, those who had played at the highest level or written about the game with authority – particularly the late Peter Corrigan who I worshipped as the godfather of Welsh sports writing.
But what struck me about that jarring Facebook memory was just how recently such naked sexism could be expressed with very little challenge. I’m not sure the phrase “call out” even existed in the social media landscape of 2012. Not that it was just faceless trolls. They did it to your face too. In the noughties, there was the WRU chief executive who, on being told I was Wales’ only female rugby writer, snapped: “Yes but can she read a map?”
There was the prominent businessmen who huffed: “I don’t write about cross-stitch why do you write about rugby?” If only I’d known at the time that Colin Charvis was a whiz with the sewing machine. That would have stitched the conversation up nicely.
And there was the less than chivalrous discussion on a football fan forum. “Can you believe the Western Mail allow a woman to write on sport?” whined one. “Yeah but is she a looker?” answered his mate.
At this point my photograph was added to the website. Let’s just say they didn’t think I was a looker and went into quite some detail why I didn’t meet their impossibly high standards of female beauty. (I wouldn’t have minded, but I thought it was one of my better pictures.).
The point is again I was being criticised for something I could do nothing about – how I looked. Male colleagues got their share of online abuse but they were never slammed for failing to resemble Brad Pitt while expressing their views on Wales’ lineout problems.
Now this isn’t a misery memoir about being persecuted by the sporting patriarchy. Thankfully these incidents were in the minority. When I look back on a side-line in rugby journalism that began with the 1999 Rugby World Cup, I can reflect on some truly joyous experiences that have brought lasting friendships, global adventures and career fulfilment.
But what has hit home this week is just how long it’s taken for the concept of women either reporting on or playing rugby and football to pass without comment and be considered, well, normal. We think of the great gains in sexual equality as historical events writhed in the mists of time yet progress in sport for women is incredibly recent.
Jacqui Oatley became the first female to commentate on a Premier League football match in 2007. That’s not long ago. I have spices in my food cupboard with older sell-by dates. But the response at the time to Oatley’s breakthrough felt more like 1907.
She was treated like a freak of nature by some of the biggest names in the game. Former Wimbledon boss Dave Bassett insisted he would walk out of the room when she began.
“I am totally against it, and everybody I know in football is totally against it,” Bassett fumed. “The problem is that everybody is too scared to admit it.”
Jimmy Greaves wasn’t afraid to voice his consternation, weighing in with that classic cliché: “When I played football back in the ’60s the only people involved in the sport were men – apart from the tea lady.” The late Greavsie was also concerned at the time about the oval ball: “I watch a lot of rugby these days. You have these hulking great rugby players talking to a female presenter on the touchline, and the girl knows pretty much nothing about the sport.” You can get the latest stories straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter here.
Sian Massey-Ellis pioneered a path in Premier League refereeing after turning professional in 2010. The following year even though she put in a flawless performance on the touchline in a Liverpool game, she had one of the biggest days of her sporting life to date ruined by a couple of blokes who reduced her to her biology.
At least the self-confessed “prehistoric banter” of Sky Sports Richard Keys and Andy Gray on the fitness of women to officiate at football matches had consequences. Not only did they get the sack, but the sexism row led to the FA being inundated with calls from women interested in becoming referees.
Because representation matters. As every young girl knows you can’t be what you can’t see. My admiration for Jayne Ludlow went up a notch when I watched a preview of Monday’s BBC Wales Legends of Sport documentary on her and realised just how driven she must have been to pursue her dream without precedent or role model.
She’s only 43 but the former Arsenal and Wales icon grew up in the Rhondda with no football pathway in sight despite her obsession with the game. She played at a time when there were no leagues or teams for girls. Though she shone in the Treherbert Boys side she was ejected at age of 11 and diverted her talent into athletics, where she became a good enough triple jumper to compete at a UK level.
Football drew her back with the opportunity to play for Barry Town, the most forward-thinking women’s team in Wales. It proved a life-changing decision. Success at Barry attracted the attention of one of the most progressive clubs in Europe – Arsenal.
Jayne joined in 2000 and in a 13-year career went on to lift 26 trophies and score 211 goals – the latter record was second only to Thierry Henry in the club’s history books. As captain she also became the first British woman to lift the Champions League Trophy in 2007, completing the fabled quadruple of FA Cup, League Cup and league title the same year.
But if Jayne scaled the heights of European club football she was brought crashing down to earth on international duty for Wales. In the documentary there is footage of a match between Wales and Germany played in front of a sparse crowd that includes two horses in a neighbouring field. The post-match interview Jayne gives is a masterclass of contained fury and frustration as she points out Germany’s triumph was inevitable given they met “every weekend and we meet twice a year”.
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Underfunding and lack of infrastructure remained obstacles to Welsh women’s football when Jayne took over as coach of the national side in 2014. We see current Wales internationals Natasha Harding and Helen Ward discuss how she galvanised the squad, changing their mindset and bringing a new confidence and professionalism. She would lead them through two qualifying campaigns where they narrowly missed out on their first ever major tournament.
By this time, the media had finally taken an interest. Streaming or screening of games has become normalised and expected just a few short years after the chauvinists moaned that no-one would watch women’s sport. A stupid, cyclical argument – how would we ever find out if it was never shown?
And it has found an audience – 33 million people watched women’s domestic sport last year. This was a statistic quoted by Telegraph Women’s Sport, who are justifiably patting themselves on the back this week for their success in gaining a growing readership in print and online three years after the launch of their women’s sports supplement under the editorship of the impressive Anna Kessel.
The Telegraph is perhaps an unlikely environment for such pioneering journalism but, credit where it’s due, the newspaper is helping transform written coverage of women’s sport. As its correspondent Molly Mcwee points out: “That visibility was in desperate need. At the time of the launch, just 2% of national newspaper sports stories were about women, fewer than 2% were written by women and, beyond Olympians, no women in sport were household names in Great Britain.”
The media doesn’t just have a duty to reflect women’s sport, it can help improve it. Bigger platforms bring greater scrutiny. When Welsh women’s rugby finally got its television spotlight the public witnessed how amateur Wales were being left behind by the more progressive and professional nations and they embarrassed the governing body into action.
Social media drove a 4,000-signature petition and in November last year the WRU finally took steps to push the women’s game into the 21st century with 10 full-time contracts. We’ve already seen improvement as Wales erased the horror of last year’s 45-0 thumping by Ireland in the Six Nations with a thrilling victory in Dublin last weekend.
There is a respect and excitement accompanying their campaign that is fresh and positive, not to mention a decent marketing campaign for the first time – #Herstory is an effective hashtag. The tournament itself also feels as if it is finally getting the attention it deserves with a schedule distanced from the men’s championship and the enormity of TikTok’s support – a sponsor with a global reach.
It’s all so overdue but so very welcome. I didn’t just get nonsense from misogynists with crockery cleaning fixations 10 years ago, I got a lovely letter from a 13-year-old girl from Gwynedd who wanted to be a rugby writer. She could see what she wanted to be even if there were hardly any of us. There is still so much to be done to normalise the pathways of women’s sport and make this landscape fully inclusive. I just hope we’ll get to the stage where young girls can take for granted the things so many of us never could.
