Iceland v England

What could possibli go wrong?

Women’s football has come a long way in recent years. I think it is now fair to say that the International England Women’s Team is now an equal to the International England Men’s Team.

• Both reaching the semi final of their respective World Cups.
• Both getting beaten in aforementioned semi finals, after playing uncharacteristically badly.

Last night’s defeat for the Lionesses was accompanied by some events, which fans who have followed the men’s side will find all too depressingly familiar…

• Scoring a goal, only for it to be controversially disallowed by the referee.
• Being awarded a penalty.
• Missing the penalty.
• A player getting sent off, for doing something stupid.
• Crying at full time. *

* of course, there’s nothing wrong in showing your emotions – I’ve cried a river over Leeds before now. John Terry made blubbing, after losing, fashionable. The women have just followed suit.

A lot is being made of today’s match between England and Cameroon in the Womens World Cup.

I watched the game. Cameroon were a disgusting team and displayed such extreme misbehaviour. I have never seen all these examples from one team in a single match…

• Spitting
• Serious foul play
• Shoving the referee over
• Refusing to restart the game, after VAR ruled in favour of England

Here’s a couple of videos I found on Twitter, showing how naughty those Cameroon girls behaved this afternoon.

As punishment, they need to be sent to their bedroom, grounded for a week, with no access to their Instagram account.

Either that, or a nominal fine and one-match ban, would equally do.

Like I said, I can’t take credit for these videos; so if you are a Cameroon player reading this, please don’t find me and beat me up.

Watching that World Cup game, along with hundreds of millions of other football fans worldwide, reminded me very much of Tiverton Town, when they paid a visit to Twerton Park, the home of Bath City, many years ago. Cameroon probably learnt a thing or two from the Devonshire thugs.

All this nasty stuff had overshadowed England’s win. A victory that means the Lionesses progress to the quarter finals of the tournament. Win that one too, and they will have matched the boys’ success of last year (getting to the semi final). Could the girls go one step further?

The opposition will no doubt be harder to beat than Cameroon, but at least the England players won’t have to worry about being assaulted, spat at or bearing witness to any temper tantrums, should they have the audacity to score a goal.

It is nice to see the England Women football team doing well this year, just like their male counterparts 12 months ago.

To be fair to the Lionesses, they’ve been getting better and better over the last decade. Until last summer, England men had been pretty rubbish since 1996.

I’m not here to blog about the players. I am blogging about my observations concerning the fans and their behaviour.

Maybe it is just the media portrays things, but if you are a supporter of a country in the Womens World Cup, whether it is England or another team, you’re perceived to be well-behaved, honourable and, according to one story I noticed, “photogentic”.

At first, I did find that a tad sexist, especially the word “photogenic”, as the headline came across as “look at these lovely girlies. See, they can watch football too. Bless their cotton socks”.

I can assure anyone in any doubt that women enjoy mens football too. Indeed, it was following Bath City where I met my wonderful wife of three years and 364 days (it’s our anniversary tomorrow).

I can forgive the news article a bit, as I noticed photos of male fans – of course, tucked away at the bottom of the page!

Compare this to how male fans of the mens team are usually reported… loud, sweaty, lager louts. At least the red-top tabloids have stopped brandishing any man with the audacity to fly the St George flag a hooligan.

To be fair, there are a lot of football fans who are loud, sweaty, lager louts… many of these are even women!