Women’s football has made huge strides in Wales but the online response to Swansea’s 3-0 win over Cardiff highlighted the absurd challenges which women in the game still face.
Sunday’s derby was a historic occasion, the first time a Welsh Premier Women’s League fixture had been broadcast live on television, thanks to S4C.
It was a landmark event for the league and for many viewers it was their first taste of Welsh women’s club football.
They were treated to a feisty contest between the two rivals but reigning champions Swansea ran out convincing winners.
It was great to see the Swans get their season off to a winning start, beating the club’s biggest rivals in the process. It was also fantastic to see the league receive extra coverage and hopefully these live broadcasts will become a more regular occurrence in future.
The fact it was shown on TV has undoubtedly expanded the league’s reach but it’s also sadly exposed the league to the types of idiots who for some reason pop up whenever women’s football receives any kind of attention.
A clip was widely shared on social media of a missed first half opportunity for Cardiff’s Catherine Walsh.
The Swans were only leading 1-0 when Walsh charged down a clearance by the Swansea keeper and seemed destined to score an easy tap-in as a result. Unfortunately she momentarily lost her balance and bearings in the charge-down and got her feet in a bit of a mess before poking her close-range effort into the side netting.
It was a costly error with the game finely balanced at that point, but on social media it was seen as much more than just an embarrassing miss.
The clip was widely shared and ridiculed. In the eyes of some imbeciles this was of course a representation of women’s football as a whole, an example of why women shouldn’t play football at all.
It seems whenever a female footballer makes any kind of mistake at any level, these infantile Twitter accounts are on hand to make sweeping and ill-informed generalisations, dismissing women’s football on the basis of one 10-second clip.
These often faceless accounts are there in a flash to dismiss the whole of women’s football as “irrelevant,” claiming nobody cares about it, which is a strange statement considering these wasters spend so much of their time sharing opinions on the topic.
Of course these morons conveniently overlooked the fact that there were three high quality goals in Sunday’s match including a stunning volley from Shaunna Jenkins, because this clearly didn’t fit their agenda.
They obviously apply a different standard when judging men’s football. You’ll see plenty of shocking mistakes in the men’s game but these don’t see an entire gender dismissed as unworthy of the beautiful game.
Nobody who saw Thiago Silva’s nightmare Chelsea debut last week reacted by claiming men should not play football, or that all men’s football is a joke.
These individuals have a strange obsession with the women’s game and its audacity to even exist. I can’t work out why they’re so irritated by something which seemingly has no impact on their lives.
Like moths to a flame they are attracted to any news story about women’s football, where they typically spam the comment section with claims that the quality is awful and nobody watches it anyway.
Their remarks usually do nothing but highlight their own ignorance.
Women’s football across the world has developed at an incredible rate over recent years. The standard at major international and club tournaments has improved enormously despite the fact it’s still massively underfunded and under-resourced in most countries.
The theory that nobody cares is also blatantly untrue.
As the women’s game receives more media attention, attendances across the globe are rising.
More than a billion people are thought to have tuned in to watch the 2019 Women’s World Cup.
Attendance records for women’s football are constantly being broken both at international and domestic level. Pointing out these facts would be a pointless endeavour because the type of people who constantly disparage women’s football at all levels are just misogynistic morons who will happily ignore any success stories which disprove their theories.
It’s not just on-field action that infuriates them. Whenever any woman gets a job as a presenter, pundit, commentator or reporter covering the men’s game, it’s instantly labelled tokenistic, politically correct box-ticking. These women’s qualifications are irrelevant in the eyes of their detractors. No matter how good they are at their job, so many people will still maintain they have no place in the sport.
Many would argue the best thing to do would be to ignore these keyboard warriors, but that’s easier said than done.
Playing in a televised match was a big moment for many of the Swansea and Cardiff players. It’s clear from those players’ reactions on social media that the abuse and sexist mockery they’ve witnessed since then has taken some gloss off the occasion.
Many have spoken out against the trolls and thankfully received considerable support from fans of both men’s and women’s football.
It’s important that those who want to see women’s football flourish speak out when it comes under attack, especially in Wales where the game is reaching new heights all the time.
At international level we are now able to compete with some of the best countries in the world, as shown by the recent Euro qualifier against Norway which Wales were unlucky to lose. Not long ago Jayne Ludlow’s side drew against England and took their 2019 World Cup qualification bid to the final game.
Welsh internationals are more well-known than ever and their performances are attracting new generations of fans.
More and more Welsh players are able to become full-time professionals, opening doors for aspiring youngsters who can now dream of making a career out of the sport they love.
Grass roots participation has grown rapidly and hopefully televising matches can help the Welsh club scene develop.
Welsh women’s football is buzzing and as a result it’s much better placed to tackle these trolls.
It’s far easier to silence the naysayers when you have a proven track record of success and that’s exactly what women’s football now has, not just in Wales but globally.
The sight of girls playing football on playgrounds, in parks and even on our TV screens is now so common, it seems increasingly strange that anybody would have a problem with it.
Women’s football has been one of the 21st century’s fastest growing sports worldwide. An FAW report recently found that participation had increased by 50 per cent since 2016, demonstrating its phenomenal rise here in Wales.
It’s infuriating that we still have narrow-minded people berating anything to do with women’s football but as the game continues to excel, there is hope this freakish minority will eventually shrink and disappear.
Those who claim “women have no place in football” are in actual fact the ones who football needs to get rid of as soon as possible.
