Interest in women’s sport is growing, but is there still work to do?
It’s rained solidly throughout the day, but it has stopped long enough for me to capture the scene as Chichester City Ladies football club complete their Thursday night training session at Milton Cross School in Portsmouth.
The first team are preparing for Sunday’s game against C & K Basildon Ladies in the FA Women’s National League Southern Premier Division — the third tier of English women’s football.
The commitment and effort that each and every member of the team is putting into this high intensity session is palpable, yet you would struggle to find anything close to an ego within the confines of the pitch. As I stand on the sideline, I appreciate a scene that deserves to be noticed and applauded.
Female participation in sport is continuing to grow in the UK and this week it has been revealed that the public interest in Women’s sport has also risen, according research carried out by Nielsen Sports.
But Clive Stubbs, Chichester City Ladies’ development squad manager, believes there is still work to be done. I ask him if the media are doing enough for women’s sport: “Local papers yes,” he says. “Major companies no. Not even an ounce. You look at the England game on Tuesday night — where was it?”
The answer is, it was broadcast by BT Sport, away from the eyes of the masses. Stubbs speaks, of course, about the England women’s team, who incidentally are ranked higher by FIFA than their male counterparts. Guilty as charged?
Chichester Ladies first team player Gracie White, 18, thinks so. “It is quite frustrating because the women’s team finished third in the World Cup, and they’re third in the world. They’re a really good side and I feel like they don’t get enough recognition.”
This is a trend that cuts right through the heart of women’s football, and women’s sport in general, but White believes there is room for optimism. “The women’s game is growing, and I feel like it will be there at some point, we’ve just got to be patient.”
Positives can be found at a more local level. Chichester City Ladies are currently six tiers higher than Chichester City Men in the FA pyramid, something in which they take immense pride.
Says White: “We’re buzzing, obviously — you don’t really hear about the men, so it makes a nice change because normally it’s all about them. We share Oaklands Park, which is our home ground, and I feel like it’s become our home ground rather than theirs, it’s a good feeling to be able to overtake them.”
If there is one word which reverberates around any discussion on women’s sport, it’s participation. Eric Coleborn, chairman of Portsmouth F.C. Ladies, tells me: “Participation is a big thing, getting women and girls to actually take part in sport.”
But he also feels that such a thing cannot be forced: “It takes time to get the public to invest, you shouldn’t rush things, let it take its course. We just have to do things correctly, promote correctly, get people involved, it will take a generation.”
The gradual growth of women’s sport has relied a great deal on inspirational performances from British women. The successes of Jessica Ennis-Hill brought women’s sport onto the front pages and paved the way for a spike in female participation following the London Olympics in 2012, but Stubbs still thinks the media has a larger responsibility to get girls involved in sport.
He says: “We need to retain a younger fan base. Schools should know about it. If you’re aspiring to be someone you should be able to look at someone.”
The impact of clubs like Chichester City Ladies will become clearer in time, but at least for now it looks like there is a lot of work to be done before we can consider the world of women’s sport to be as open and available as men’s.
