FA takes long view on women's game




Imagine the scene at next year's World Cup finals in Germany.....

Sven-Goran Eriksson's England side win their opening game with a thrilling last-minute strike - but lose their next two games to find themselves eliminated from the tournament.

Even if the Football Association could persuade current rugby union spin doctor Alastair Campbell to work his magic, the English public would struggle to accept the tournament as a success.

But England's early exit at Euro 2005, the women's football European Championships, has not dampened the FA's enthusiasm for developing the sport in England.

For the FA, whose long-term aim is to establish a professional women's league, the goals for and against figures are secondary to the impressive 69,481 combined attendance at England's matches.

"The future's bright," FA spokesman Alex Stone told BBC Sport.

"If you look at the crowds and media coverage, it has been phenomenal.

ENGLAND'S EURO 2005 ATTENDANCES

England 3-2 Finland:
29,092 (Ewood Park)
England 1-2 Denmark:
14, 695 (Ewood Park)
England 0-1 Sweden:
25,694 (City of Manchester Stadium)
Combined total: 69,481
Average attendance: 23,160

BBC TELEVISION VIEWING FIGURES

England v Finland:
2.6m average, 2.9m peak, 12.12% audience share
England v Denmark:
1.7m average, 2.3m peak, 11.5% audience share
England v Sweden:
2.4m average, 3m peak, 15.2% audience share

"Just under 70,000 people came to watch England's three games and it was way beyond our original expectations - it's a fantastic achievement.

"The quality of the football the team played was obviously instrumental. Hopefully a fair number will come back to watch when the team play their World Cup qualifiers in September.

"When we bid for the tournament three years ago, we saw it as part of a long-term plan to assist the development of the women's game here.

"It's part of our plan to get more women participating: there is that opportunity to go from a local club, to a centre of excellence and potentially into the England set-up.

"There are England teams at the under-17, 19 and 21 level. The structure is in place to support those who just want to play for fun and for those who want to push on to the highest level."

Women's football has long had to struggle against a lack of interest - both from players and, just as importantly, the media.

But with live coverage and highlight programmes on BBC television, together with increased coverage in newspapers, the women's game is finally starting to receive the profile its supporters believe it deserves.

"It helps to open people's eyes to the quality of the players and to dispel the lazy clichés about the standard," added Stone.

"People will have seen that these players can play and that it can be just as entertaining as the men's game."

Women's football in England has had a Premier League since 1993, with Northern and Southern leagues below.

Attendances are growing but the goal of a professional league is still a distant prospect until the game starts to attract significant sponsorship.

"The aim of setting up a full-time league was set up some time ago when Adam Crozier was FA chief executive," said Stone.

"Realistically, that's not going to happen in the next month or year. It comes down to financial investment.

"They tried setting one up in the United States and when it didn't quite come off, investment started to fall away. The investment has to be sustainable - that's the key to it."

Before the tournament started, England coach Hope Powell said that her team's job was to promote the game.

"It's an opportunity to showcase the sport," she told BBC Sport.

"We want to leave a legacy so young girls will play the game. England can become a team to be reckoned with."

While England, despite some encouraging displays, manifestly failed to produce the results needed, it seems the FA are more than happy to play the patient parent and help the adolescent game into adulthood.

Quite an interesting article on the history of the game if you're interested in it. Never knew scotland voted against womens football... it's pretty popular up here.

The earliest recorded women's football match anywhere in the world took place in 1895 in North London.

During the First World War the female workers of the munitions factories used to play matches because men were away fighting the war.

But in 1921 The FA became concerned that money raised ostensibly for charitable purposes was not finding its way to such organisations.

Their response - to pass a rule forbidding women from playing football - and that rule remained in force until December 1969.

This did not deter such stalwarts as the Dick, Kerr's Ladies of Preston or the Manchester Corinthians - but the spur for the growth of the game came with England's 1966 World Cup victory.

Clubs began to appear although it was difficult at first to locate them but in 1967 my team was contacted by Arthur Hobbs who was organising the Deal tournament for ladies football (as it was then known).

Arthur knew that we needed to be organised and over the next few years we formed our teams into leagues and in late 1969 the Ladies FA of Great Britain was born.

The name was swiftly changed to the Women's FA as we were advised that "women's" was a more inclusive word with "ladies" judged more suitable for the more demure pastime of golf!

In those days we included in our number the few teams of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales but eventually the other British men's associations pointed out that we could not govern their teams.

Initially the FA was reluctant to alter its rules but constant representation brought about the rescinding of the 1921 rule so that our teams could play on local park pitches and use official referees, as they were no longer considered to be unaffiliated.

In late 1971, Uefa was becoming concerned that here was a branch of football which needed to be controlled and in an historic vote, 31 countries voted in favour with one against (Scotland) to bring women's football into the fold.

In February 1972, the FA chose to recognise the WFA as "the sole governing body of women's football in this country at the present time".

It didn't give us much but it was a step forward.

For the next 20 years the WFA struggled against the odds to establish women's football;

The WFA Cup began in 1971 with sponsorship from Mitre;

there was financial and other support from The Sports Council and the Central Council of Physical Recreation;

the WFA registered women referees until the Sex Discrimination Act came into force and the FA had to concede that women could be registered with their County Association;

the first official England team was formed and their first opponents were Scotland in Greenock on 18 November 1972 - coincidentally exactly 100 years after the first men's international which was played in Glasgow.
The result? A 3-2 victory over Scotland.

In the mid-eighties the WFA was granted affiliation to the FA and a seat on the Council but the struggle was hard and in 1993 it was somewhat reluctantly decided to hand over the day to day running of the game to The FA.

The progress has been enormous with the clubs/leagues still run by those thousands of anonymous people who give their time and effort selflessly - just like the boys/men's clubs up and down the country.

Today, football has replaced netball as the most popular sport among girls in the UK, with more than 100,000 registered players.

and now you have the ManU Bucaneers