[Football] Women's World Cup - are you now a fan?

brightn'ove said:

So the FA saying that some women’s games will become ‘double headers’ with men’s games, perhaps if the ladies played directly after an Albion win on a Saturday afternoon at the Amex they would get both a larger than average crowd AND everyone would be suitably boozed to give the girls a good atmosphere. Personally I am up for that idea, if you can stay in your seat.

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Bob'n'weave said:

No. For the same reason I don't watch div 3 football. It's shite football. Looks like over 50's walk-ball.

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southstandandy said:

Women's World Cup - are you now a fan?

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Megazone said:

Didn't watch a single minute of it, so still not interested. The standard is still too low for me to get excited about it.

Though my first ever match at the Goldstone was the England women's team vs Iceland women's team, so I can't be too critical.

PS The goalkeeping is bloody awful

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southstandandy said:

On the back of a largely entertaining Women's World Cup (notwithstanding some awful refereeing and VAR deciaions) who here is now going to consider supporting our ladies team this coming domestic season?

Season tickets are ony £30 for adults and £10 for kids and me and the wife are going to get some this coming season as the games never clash with the mens first team. We went to 5 games last year and enjoyed the matches so we thought we'd get a season ticket as that covers all 11 matches.

There's been a major promotion of the ladies game during this summer's World Cup so we thought we'd take the plunge and go to the home games this season at Crawley to support our ladies in addition to the mens first team.

Anyone elso going to give this a go this season?

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hart's shirt said:

There's really 2 different questions there.

1. WWC

Positives:
- The games have been mostly played in a good spirit with very little diving, simulation or cynical play
- Despite some howlers (e.g. Australia's 4th v Jamaica, Chile's 1st v Thailand), some of the goalkeeping has been impressive (e.g. Chile's Endler, Argentina's Correa)
- England's progress to the Semi-Final was on par with pre-tournament ranking and expectations despite some poor results in the build-up (e.g. 0-1 loss to NZ at Amex)

Negatives:
- VAR is already casting a long shadow over the game and threatening to fundamentally fix what for the most part isn't broken
- There clearly aren't enough female officials who are a good enough standard. FIFA should use men until such a time that there are, regardless of how it looks.
- Most of the games weren't sold out with blocks of empty seats in the upper tiers frequently deserted in spite of ticket prices from only 9 Euros.

Away from the tournament itself, the media gleefully jumped on the Lioness bandwagon and got behind the England team.

BBC Sport webpages bordered on indoctrination with scattergun coverage of articles of varying quality and dubious insights.

Despite the need for the women's game to stand alone, there were frequent unnecessary and unhelpful comparisons:

“Jill Scott beats Peter Shilton’s record"
(No, she hasn't. It's a different game.)

"Five ways women's football beats men's" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48742850
(To save you clicking...1 - value for money; 2 - more goals; 3 - women stick to the rules; 4 - global competition; 5 - LGBT+ support)

It frequently resembled a primary school playground. All that was missing was 'girls are better than boys, so nerrr...'.
Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, it predictably came thick and fast in the 'Have Your Say' comments.
The moderators are probably still in therapy...

When teams lose 13-0, it's unlikely that expanding to a 32 team tournament is worth FIFA's consideration away from the usual moneymaking and bribes.

Nevertheless, and despite all of the BBC's attempted re-education, it was an enjoyable tournament with some outstanding goals (e.g. Bronze v Norway).

So there's a good future ahead for the beautiful game globally and a step forward in terms of future sponsorship and commercial partners.


2. Albion Women

Even with all of the focus on the Lionesses, the attendance numbers for domestic games don't lie.

Crawley's certainly an issue, but not necessarily the overriding factor here. Nor is the very cheap ticket price. It's clearly something else.

From earlier postings, it's likely that those that do will continue...and those that don't definitely won't. More reinforcement than change of views.

Watching from the comfort of a sofa is one thing, but how many extra will be motivated to head to Crawley on a wet November afternoon?

The longer lasting legacy that the WWC will hopefully have is encouraging more girls to kick a ball and join a team for friendship and health.

If the target supporter base prioritizes Lionesses over Love Island, the future for the domestic game will be assured.

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Kalimantan Gull said:

The standard was too low, the goalkeeping was bloody awful, and you didn't watch a single minute of it. That's an astonishing post

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DumLum said:

I do believe the women players at the world cup should be paid the same as the men now though.
I will not feel this way about the domestic game probably ever....well not until they are pulling in the same finances as the men.

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seagullwedgee said:

Not a fan. The standard of footballing skill is still quite poor, so I can’t derive any sense of sporting adrenaline from it.

In the same way that a devoted watcher of ballet would probably find it very difficult to observe an 18 stone man doing a pas-de-deux and other technical graceful moves, and just looking relatively poor at it.

I wish I could get it. But I just can’t. I understand how and why others can like it and pay to go and see it. I just can’t.

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