Her Game Too: A Manifesto for Change - Softcover

Riley, Matthew

 
9781801502085: Her Game Too: A Manifesto for Change
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1801502080 ISBN 13: 9781801502085
Verlag: Pitch Publishing Ltd, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Her Game Too is a call to arms for women to be given equal access to profile, opportunities and advancement in the beautiful game. Since the sport's early days, women have been excluded from football, with those brave enough to participate, either as fans or players, beset by misogynistic attitudes if not outright abuse.

While we've seen great strides made in the battle for respect and inclusion, sadly there's still a long way to go. Matt Riley provides a platform for key voices in the movement, galvanized around HerGameToo, an organization run by female fans to fight sexism in football. We hear from the HerGameToo founders who were name-dropped in the House of Commons, Helen Nkwocha, the first woman to coach a top-flight men's team in Europe, and HerGameToo director Natalie Atkinson among others.

The book explores the roots of the movement with the story of pioneering female footballer Lily Parr, and sheds light on the future, which has looked increasingly bright since Premier League side Everton pledged its support to HerGameToo.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Matt Riley worked as a journalist in Thai football for many years, appearing regularly on the Fox Sports Central nightly show beamed across Asia, before returning to England as Lecturer in Business Management at the University of Exeter. Today he writes content for Fair Game Too UK as their Regional Media Manager.

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1.
The Euros. Don’t Watch
Women’s Football
YOU MAY have heardThere was a football tournament in
England this summerThe England team took on and beat
all comers through irrepressible force (Norway) sheer guts
and determination against a technically gifted and tactically
advanced Spain (until their coach’s bizarre substitution
decisions) and showed how far their game has advanced when
dismantling a largely amateur Northern IrelandPlenty about
that final to come ... Stadiums have been packed, television
audiences have smashed records (for that England and Spain
game it peaked at 76 million plus 15 million BBC streams)
and games often full of technical and physical mastery have
described dramatic and compelling story arcsThere were
93 million BBC viewers and two million streams for the
semi final meant record keepers were updating faster than
those cat furiously typing memesSo here I am 100 words
into the paragraph and I only mentioned the ‘w’ of wins
and not of ‘women’ Why? I never watch women’s footballI
watch the beautiful game played by artists like De Bryne or
Bronze, defensive titans like Bright or Van Dijk and daydream
achievers like Kane or Stanway
Now with the broadest of platforms, increasing seasons
of elite training and financial security in their legs, lungs
and minds, the hype comes from the contest (and THAT
backheel) instead of being fuelled by hopeWhen alking
toThe Athletic’s Sarah Shephard in July 2022, consummate
presenter Gabby Logan admitted that had been previously,
especially for the 2007 World Cup in China, it had been a
challenge, ‘being really enthusiastic about something but
knowing that it’s not quite there yet’The Euros have been
a case study in ‘build it and they will come’Not only is the
product on offer now consistently of the highest quality,
but there was reassuring normality walking into our local
pub with all the screens showing Germany beating Austria
Drinkers ridiculed Austrian keeper Manuela Zinsberger for
gifting the Germans a second goal because of her decision-
making rather than chromosome count, which lowers the
temperature of conversations and creates normality in
evaluating the action over the actors

FIFA 23. Don’t Play Women’s Football
The next FIFA iteration expands to include the WSL and
French Division 1 Féminine for the first timeThe game’s
cover features two players, Kylian Mbappé and Sam Kerr,
and also adds the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New
ZealandTo be fair to EA Sport, women have been included
since 2015, but with only a smattering of international
sides and, in FIFA 22, the profile had evolved to include 17
international squads and increasing access to features like
Pro Club modes allowing thumb twiddlers to create a female
playerPrevious efforts invited talk of gender tokenism, but
FIFA 23 (the 30th and final edition created by EA Sport)
should help lay that to restLike so many of the issues
surrounding the women’s game, success will come when no
one (apart from apoplectic keyboard warriors) even notices
their player or team’s gender and focusses their ire on poor
defending or missed open goals

Euro 2022. Don’t Ruin Women’s Football
In his predictably eviscerating and affirming article on 18
July 18th John Nicholson described this tournament as, ‘like
a filter for the dickheads who spoil football for the rest of us’
Echoing a phrase Boris Johnson used to berate Putin (sorry to
drag him in, John), the ‘toxic masculinity’ that often blights
our matchday experiences drives the atmosphere down to the
lowest common denominator of a drink/drug-fuelled bear pit
where the ‘it’s only banter’ defence is trotted out for a range
of reprehensible behavioursRailing against what he sees
as a world becoming more conflicted and confrontational,
Nicholson sees the women’s game as an instructive inversion
of these testosterone-fuelled trends
The inclusive, welcoming and supportive atmosphere we
feel at Exeter City Women FC is a window into the women’s
game and fuels the EurosFree from boorish and belligerent
posturing, Euros crowds also reminded me of my time
working in Thai football where families would see games as
a chance to enjoy each other’s company, knowing they were
safe from having to explain to granny what a ‘pedo’ was or
why we are all encouraged to ‘shit on the City’
Nicholson’s key point is punishingly tellingThe
overwhelming dominance of men in general and a particular
male demographic in particular feeds on itself with a race to
the bottom of general unpleasantness cloaked in the lie that
this is what real support looks likeThe Euros crowds had a
balance: of age, gender and orientation so that abuse has no
room to breathe, fester and explode like some inky boil but is
stifled at sourceNicholson draws a powerful image of those
who prefer male dominance and a carte blanche for cretins,
describing those who feel he is a woolly ‘woke’ bleeding heart
liberal as watching on with:
‘faces angrily twisted like an inflamed hernia, indignant
that someone is neutering their desire to piss in gardens and
insert flaming objects into their rectum’
It used to be a simple logic about the women’s game that,
with so few fans watching, the mob didn’t get a chance to
ruleBut, with its exponential growth, the women’s game has
not switched off its ‘dickhead filter’ and Nicholson’s article
climaxes with the sadness this joyous new footballing world
has engendered in the men hell-bent on dumb weekend

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Verlag
Pitch Publishing Ltd
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1801502080
ISBN 13 
9781801502085
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
255
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