New feature – Women’s football: a kick in the teeth?

The Women’s World Cup is well underway, but the game is languishing for lack of support, argues Joanne Fradley

The World Cup has kicked off. Didn’t you know? If not, that’s because the competition has been surprisingly unreported.

England have a real chance this year of going the distance; it could happen for us in Germany. Where’s the relentless build up? The tacky flags and plastic noise makers? Why are the TV schedules so miraculously normal? There’s the part that I didn’t mention; it’s the Women’s World Cup.

Lianne_Sanderson_crop.JPGJust feel this silence for a moment, really take time to notice the absence of teary eyed rhetoric, emotional montages and over-full pub doorways. It’s a parallel universe, a time when football is not everything, match tickets are not bandying around for three or four times their original value, flights to the host country haven’t rocketed in price.

Indeed if you were so inclined you could purchase yourself a seat at a game for as little as €6. But you’re not inclined and neither is anyone else it seems.

Women’s football has had a big moment. It began to garner popularity during the First World War, while the men’s league was disbanded, and continued to draw crowds into the early 1920s with numbers sometimes reaching 50,000 spectators a match.

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