by Victor Meldrew »
07 Jul 2019 13:13
Royal Rother Ok, after all this silly waffle, time for the truth.
Despite the ultimate disappointment for England the tournament has been a huge success, illustrating the massive progress the game has made in the last few years. Skill, technique, goalkeeping, fitness, in fact, EVERYTHING has improved massively, including interest from the public, and WILL result in increased profile for the game and significantly higher attendances.
The growth in the next few years is going to be huge.
(Even ER knows all this, but clearly gets some jollies saying otherwise. He’s so edgy.
)
You may well be right.
A cautionary note however-remember the London Olympics and the legacy aspect that won us the games in the first place.
I can't quote chapter and verse but ,from what I have read, little has changed in terms of youngsters taking up sport and IIRC it's not a case of more but actually less.
The good thing from the women's point of view is that the tournament was covered by National TV which led to those outstanding viewing figures and 8-00 midweek was probably a time when nothing else much was on.
Also BBC has so little big time sport to show that they hyped this tournament to a mega level.
So yes it will be interesting to see if football now takes over from netball and hockey (just as basketball has overtaken men's cricket in the West Indies) as the main winter sport for women but I do have a feeling that these heroines will be forgotten in a few weeks' time just as happened with the women's cricket team once the well publicised tournament was over and Australia started regularly beating them again.
I know you like your non-league football; do you think you will now start going to watch (and pay to watch) women's football as well?