Eat. Sweat. Play

by Anna Kessel

  ‘It just really highlighted how much mistrust people had at the time of a woman being able to do that job, or having the passion, knowledge and experience,’ says Jacqui now of her Match of the Day debut. ‘Maybe if Twitter had been more popular at the time they would have known I tweet about football all day every day; maybe they just thought I’d been plucked from the office and plonked in the commentary box and told to shout, “Yakubu!” A lot of it is quite amusing, people’s perceptions. You realize actually what a lot of people genuinely thought about women in football. Hopefully times have changed since.’

  So, have they? No woman has since commentated on the BBC’s flagship football programme, or even on BBC 5 Live’s football coverage. Jacqui’s history-making first-ever MOTD commentary is preserved in the National Football Museum in Manchester as just that – a piece of history. Jacqui says life has changed a lot for her personally. She feels much more respected by those in the industry – managers, players, journalists. ‘Maybe I’ve gained that level of acceptance for being around for so long. [But] I think one of the reasons I’ve become accepted is because I moved into presenting rather than staying in commentating. I think that is still an issue. I think a lot of people, and not just men, by the way, don’t want to hear a woman commentate. There’s the acceptance – does she really know what she’s talking about? Can I trust her to tell me who’s playing well and who’s not? And that’s an innate part of prejudice. People want to know: have you played the game? Dave Bassett’s quote about not having kicked a ball in my life made me laugh; I changed career because I had to give up playing, and I’m a qualified coach. He just made an assumption!’

  Jacqui hopes that the next woman to commentate on MOTD will face less opprobrium, simply by virtue of being the second rather than the first. She wonders, though, if any woman will be prepared to face the grief that accompanies the job. ‘Unfortunately I think any female wanting to commentate is still going to ask themselves do they really want the hassle of pushing themselves to reach that level? To be slagged off. Because even if they’re excellent they will still be slagged off by a large proportion of the viewing public. Do they want that in their life? Sadly that is going to be an issue for them and it will take someone with very thick skin to do that.’

  Working to change that fact is Shelley Alexander, BBC Editorial Lead for Women’s Sport and in charge of the BBC Sport outreach programme to find new talent. Shelley remembers being ‘thrilled’ on first meeting Jacqui and excited about her potential after she sent in some non-league commentary she had done for Radio Leeds. But what followed shocked even Shelley, a stalwart of the football industry. ‘We knew it would be a big moment for football and the BBC but we were knocked sideways by the intensity of the scrutiny and unwarranted criticism that Jacqui’s commentary received,’ she tells me. ‘It not only had a significant impact on Jacqui’s professional development but I saw first-hand the chilling effect it had on the ambitions of other women to follow in Jacqui’s footsteps.’

  Shelley has since worked on a number of BBC schemes to encourage new talent, and one of these led to a specific initiative aimed at encouraging young women through regional opportunities, Women in Local Radio Sport (WIRLS). ‘These women commentators are still learning their trade and, just like Jacqui Oatley in her early days, they need to be nurtured and given the opportunity out of the limelight to progress, but there is no doubt that I am excited for the future. These WIRLS have not been pitched straight into commentating – they are learning the basic skills of sports reporting and the hope is that eventually several of them will progress to become commentators in the future, and their visibility in the meantime does inspire other young women to consider this career.’ We certainly need them, and not just in football. It’s so rare to hear a woman commentating on any sport. British gymnastics coach Christine Still commentates on men’s gymnastics as well as women’s, but you’d be hard-pressed to name many female commentators across other sports. Alison Mitchell flies the flag for women in cricket, Sara Orchard has done the same in rugby, Katherine Merry commentates on IPC championships – but there are no female commentators, for example, in able-bodied athletics despite it being a sport for men and women.

  It will take a few years, but one of the women on Shelley’s scheme could just end up being the next female commentator on Match of the Day. If that happened, would we ever accept them? Is the female vocal register a non-starter for sports fans? Shelley cuts through the prejudice. ‘What they have to all achieve to make it to the top of the game is consistent, measured delivery to achieve accuracy, clarity and colour – painting those match pictures and bringing the excitement and passion of a football match. This applies most significantly to that marvellous moment when a goal is scored. It is here that a commentator faces a formidable challenge – how to bring all the thrill and information about the goal while preventing their voice from rising too much. This is a skill that men and women commentators must learn equally, and it is only by training and experience that they can perfect it.’

  What’s important about Shelley’s analysis is that it doesn’t refer to the register or pitch of a person’s voice. It is not about which note they come out with, it’s about how controlled they are in their delivery, and that control is most evident in calling a goal, a try, a strike, a match-winning point. The skill of a commentator is in conveying the excitement of the moment, but with enough authority and restraint to guide the viewer or listener through the events. It is about how a voice is employed, not which note it hits. Crucially, that makes the gender of the commentator irrelevant.

  Thankfully, we are making progress. In 2013 the BBC’s Charlotte Green was the first woman to read out the football results on the radio, and Rebecca Lowe – now stateside at NBC – became the first woman to host an FA Cup final. In 2014 former England cricketer Isa Guha became the first female summarizer on Test Match Special, while my colleague Amy Lawrence and England and Chelsea striker Eniola Aluko were the first women to feature as Match of the Day pundits, albeit on the offshoot MOTD2 Extra. Meanwhile in a little patch of Hertfordshire, Emma Saunders – a BBC journalist – has been making inroads as a stadium announcer for Watford FC’s Premier League campaign, and the UK even has its own all-female podcast in The Offside Rule Podcast (We Get It!), featuring Hayley McQueen, Lynsey Hooper and Kait Borsay.

  Many of these women do not have elite sporting careers on their CVs; they are just ordinary women who happen to feel passionately about sport, and who have the talent, the voice and the determination to convey it. They probably don’t think of themselves as beacons of change, but for the young girls watching their presence will be significant, and inspirational. And for the sceptics, their success further normalizes women having a voice in sport – whether that’s pursuing a career path, or simply giving a fan’s view about football.

  Over in the US, the long-time absence of authentic female voices in sports media led to a much more vocal response from women. In September 2014, at the height of the NFL’s domestic violence crisis, Fox Sports presenter Katie Nolan launched a video blog criticizing her own industry – and her employer – for the part it plays in supporting a misogynistic culture in sport. ‘Women in sports TV are allowed to read headlines, patrol sidelines and generally facilitate conversation for their male colleagues,’ said Nolan in a vlog that attracted over 370,000 views. ‘And, while the [sports journalists] Stephen A. Smiths, Mike Cairns, Dan Patricks and Keith Olbermanns of the world get to weigh in on the issues of the day, we just smile, and throw to commercial. A lot of people like to justify the role of women in sports media by saying, “Well, they’ve never played the game, so they aren’t qualified to speak about it.” Because God forbid someone misspeak about The Game. But topics like domestic violence, and racism and corruption? Let’s let [commentator] Boomer [Esiason] handle those between downs. It’s time for the conversation to change. Or at least those participating in the conversation. It’s time for women to have a seat at the big-boy table. A
nd not just as a gimmick or a concept but just a person who happens to have breasts offering their opinion on the sports they love and the topics they know.’ Katie’s pay-off line was perhaps the most revealing as she challenged the industry, and her own employer, to improve: ‘Because the truth is the NFL will never respect women and their opinions as long as the media it answers to doesn’t. I’m ready when you are, Fox.’34

  Echoing Katie’s words came the launch of an all-female-line-up sports show on CBS Sport, We Need To Talk. While the title has been panned, the show – which is produced and directed by an all-female staff – is an inevitable result of widespread frustrations. Twelve high-profile women, including former Oakland Raiders CEO Amy Trask and world boxing champion Laila Ali (daughter of Muhammad Ali), debate the issues of the day across men and women’s sport from a uniquely female angle. Emilie Deutsch, one of the show’s coordinating producers, told Sports Illustrated why the programme was a no-brainer. ‘I want this show to succeed for all these little girls across the country who sit and watch baseball games with their Dads and Moms and want to get into this business and have been – and I choose these words carefully – relegated to three minutes during a football game . . . It’s time for women to have a real platform.’35 I find it telling how often conversations about these issues lead to thoughts about how they will affect the next generation. As a mum, I am determined that my own daughter will never experience this kind of nonsense. That she will never view sport as a no-go area that she cannot talk about, participate in, or pursue a career in.

  Because, frankly, it’s this kind of stuff that puts women off. Women who might otherwise be football fans, but instead prefer to steer clear. Like my friend Sophie Loi-Shaw, who grew up loving Arsenal, wearing the shirt and singing the songs, but eventually downed tools out of sheer frustration. Unexpectedly, during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil Sophie called me excitedly to say how much she was loving the football. ‘I’d forgotten how much I actually liked football,’ she said. ‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it? The stuff on the actual pitch. It’s just all the other bollocks that I hate. The money, the media, the bigotry. If only all that could go away and we could just enjoy the football. Like the Olympics. Why can’t football be more like the Olympics?’

  The thing is, it can! There’s no reason why we all have to carry on with the blokey singing, and the trying to fit in, and the nervously hoping no one will notice that there’s a woman at the game, or the blushing when they do, or putting up with the dumb rape chants, or the stupid football marketing departments who believe that women will only buy their club shirt if it is reproduced in the same candyfloss pink that every other football club has selected for their female fans. Or the World Cup widow email spam, or the offside-rule handbag and shoe shopping analogies. Enough! Women like football. Women like sport. And we don’t want to change any of the good stuff about it, it’s just that some of us would quite like to change the terrible stuff. You know, the really embarrassing stuff that we never want our daughters or sons to hear. We just want to make it nicer for all of us. By adding our voices – our presence – we can own our own sporting space, our own sporting voice. And that can sound however we want it to. Whether that means shrieking in our highest register as the goals go flying in, opining on defensive play, or just having a natter about Gary Lineker’s naff new facial hair. It’s all valid.

  The opportunity to define our own female voice in sport is now. To be sports fans in the way that we want to be – hell, maybe we don’t want to memorize the entire weekend’s results for all four professional football leagues; maybe it’s OK just to enjoy the game and not have to prove our fandom. Maybe we’ll even bring some men along with us on the way; they might just find it refreshing. In the twenty-first century women should be strong enough and smart enough to trust in our own authenticity. To enjoy the sound of our voice, and to use it collectively to claim sport as a conversation for us to join in with: on the terraces, in the pubs and cafes, and certainly over the airwaves.

  Women’s sport: changing the game

  Clare Balding said it first: 2015 would be the year that changes sport for women and girls. It certainly felt that way; from the US women’s World Cup win prompting President Obama to say, ‘Playing like a girl means you’re a badass,’ to Australian jockey Michelle Payne becoming an overnight sensation in winning the Melbourne Cup and then telling the misogynists in horse racing to ‘get stuffed’. England’s women cricketers turned professional and the ECB revealed plans to launch the very first organized domestic league; Maggie Alphonsi – England’s greatest-ever female rugby star – became the first female pundit at a men’s rugby World Cup, and in tennis, tickets for the women’s US Open final sold out before the men’s for the very first time, thanks to Serena Williams (even though, in the end, she didn’t make the final). Amid the revolution, though, America’s UFC Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey has arguably provided the greatest shake-up of all.

  I first heard about Ronda early in 2015 at a talk I gave as part of the Pioneers in Sport forum, a venture aimed at breathing new life into a very old order. In the audience was David Allen, vice president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and as he left he told me the story of a female fighter whose pay-per-view fights were outselling the men. I couldn’t quite believe it. Ronda, he said, was something special. Within six months everyone knew her name. She was on every US TV station, every magazine cover, she even had a porn parody named after her: Ronda ArouseMe. Soon there was an autobiography out – written by her sports journalist sister – and she was starring in blockbuster Hollywood movies like Entourage. Less than five years after UFC president Dana White said women would never be allowed to compete in the world’s ultimate mixed martial arts fighting championship, Ronda is officially his biggest earner, his greatest star – male or female.

  Ronda’s entry into the big time has been like a whirlwind – reinventing the rules for female athletes. She is frequently lusted over as a sex symbol, and it’s true she has done her fair share of photo shoots in bikinis. But most of the time she’s not interested in playing pretty girl. She never wears make-up in the ring. She’s there to do business, hair tied back, muscles primed, face red with exertion, sometimes gruesomely bloodied. Even when she ventured into Carl’s Jr. territory (a US fast-food chain with a history of unbelievably sexual adverts) she managed to rewrite the script, snarling at the breakfast sandwich, interspersed with grainy footage of her in the ring. She has the body of a fighter: thick torso, muscly arms, powerful legs. She has the mouth of a fighter too, trash-talking boxer Floyd Mayweather. Floyd tried to hit back with some weak insults, pretending he’d never heard of her, and then boasting about how much more money he makes. But every time Floyd speaks he reminds us how smart Ronda is. I love her war of words with him: ‘I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once,’ she said, referring to his domestic violence charges after she beat him to the title of ESPY best fighter award. Or, ‘He said, “When you make $300 million a night, then you can give me a call.” . . . I did the math and I think I actually make two to three times more than he does per second. So when he learns to read and write, he can text me.’ Despite the animosity, after Ronda got knocked out by Holly Holm in the fight that shocked the world, Floyd surprised everyone by defending her from the trolls revelling in her defeat. Perhaps she’s earned respect in even the most unlikely of corners.

  Such has Ronda’s impact been on mainstream culture that Beyoncé incorporated a video recording of her ‘do-nothing bitch’ speech into her own concert. Watching the YouTube footage, it’s incredibly powerful to hear Ronda’s voice booming out to thousands in the crowd, her words illuminated across the stage, as the introduction for Beyoncé’s song ‘Diva’. The biggest pop star on the planet referencing women’s sport in her show? That’s unprecedented. But then so too, perhaps, is Ronda’s rhetoric. ‘I think it’s hilarious if people say that my body looks masculine,’ said Ronda in the now-infamous speech. ‘I’m like, “Listen, ju
st because my body was developed for a purpose other than fucking millionaires doesn’t mean it’s masculine.” I think it’s femininely badass as fuck because there’s not a single muscle on my body that isn’t for a purpose. Because I’m not a do-nothing bitch.’ The phrase was immortalized on a T-shirt, a proportion of the price going towards Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, a charity in southern California. Typical Ronda: cashing in on her celebrity, and doing a good thing at the same time.

  For all of these reasons Ronda has been dubbed the biggest feminist in sport, having successfully fought for the prefix ‘women’s’ to be removed from UFC titles and ring introductions – the first sport ever to do so. ‘I think we need to do whatever we can to take the word “woman” out of it,’ she said ahead of a fight in Melbourne. ‘I don’t hear people saying, “men’s this, men’s that” at the men’s press conference. People are here today not because they love women, but because they love fighters. We’re fighters. It’s not the “women’s UFC bantamweight”; I’m the bantamweight champion, she’s the strong weight champion, and these people are here because they love fights.’ Meanwhile she’s called out the sexist interviewers who focus on her private life, she embraces her body – including her cauliflower ears – and she’s criticized women like Kim Kardashian for selling Skechers trainers to teenage girls off the back of her rise to fame via a leaked sex tape.