Women's football on TV: refreshing at times but BBC must realise ...

The dinosaur Johnny Nic enjoying watching some women’s football coverage, save for the usual abuse of pundits and a weird BBC call involving Arne Slot.

This week, I thought it would be instructive to look at women’s football broadcasts across the week to see how well served the sport is.

It has several tasks at this time: charged with being inspirational especially but not exclusively to girls; to provide a safe family match experience; and to be entertaining football. To this auld fella it looks like it is achieving all three, though there are worries of financial disparity. With the top transfer fee being £1million, it seems to be senseless for a club spraying money in the men’s game around and often wasting it, to not put £10m into a women’s team because there’s clearly interest in it.

That said, there’s pleasure to be had from the non-monied nature of things.

We start with Inter Milan v Fiorentina on the DAZN YouTube channel. Second v Fourth. There are just 381-420 people watching a fast-paced game from a pitch in a sports centre called the KONAMI Youth Development Centre in Memory of Giacinto Facchetti, somewhere in Milan. Not many are watching around the pitch which is a shame because it’s rather good, very dynamic and not tactically negative. Given so few are watching, I’m not sure what’s in it for DAZN.

The commentator is Emmett Riordan, an Irish Times sports journalist, who is super engaged. I mean, it’s a broadcast stripped bare, but that in itself is no bad thing. I enjoy the intimacy and as YouTube is basically TV – I watch it on TV – it comes across as an obscure channel from the dusty end of the TV guide. You won’t find three ex-players on a pundit panel opining about it. That’s what is so good. It ends 2-0 to Inter.

Strasbourg v PSG in the French top flight is on the same channel later in the day from Venue Stade de la Meinau in Strasbourg. There’s 13,000 there. Mary Earps is in goal for PSG. DAZN covers a lot of women’s football. You need to subscribe to see it all. Some is free. It is Europe’s largest digital sports broadcaster with over 75 programming rights. They bring us German football and the National League too. It ends 1-2.

Sky brings us Man City v Arsenal. Caroline Barker presents and Pien Meulensteen is commentating. I really like her; she was excellent on the radio at the World Cup, even though Dawn insists on misnaming her Rex Bob Lowenstein (look it up). She’s with former Welsh coach Jayne Ludlow, an enthusiastic co-comm. Barker presents in her inimitable style, casually and with a light touch. She’s always been enjoyable going back to her 5 Live days. With pundits Jen Beattie and Steph Houghton, the whole presentation smacks of the sport being taken seriously. The days of underlying patronising seem long behind us. The game is slower-paced than the Inter Milan match and The Academy Ground is almost full to 5,000 capacity.

Interestingly, Juliette Ferrington, long a stalwart producer on 5 Live, has jumped ship to Sky and brings a good-natured, eager style to interviews. The game was really entertaining and end-to-end, finishing 3-4 to Arsenal.

You can watch three WSL games on YouTube (or a Championship match-up between Sunderland and Birmingham), the most popular of which is seventh-placed Liverpool v West Ham in ninth. It peaks at around 5,500 watching in a sparsely attended Anfield. The game is a bit messy but I enjoy watching the struggle and the esoteric, niche ‘private club’ feeling of watching it. It does keep freezing occasionally but that might be my 13mbps broadband that Openreach haven’t upgraded for seven years. Yes, that was an upgrade from two!

The BBC, not to be left out of the party, shows Villa v Chelsea and comes at it with Ellen White and Fara Williams with Alex Scott presenting. It has a similar amiable vibe to the Man City game on Sky. Robyn Cowan and Rachel Brown-Finnis do the comms. I do like Scott because underneath the smiley exterior beats a ‘f*** you’ heart, one shared by many a person who has been put down and shamefully abused. The match isn’t thrilling and feels as interesting as untying knots in string, as football routinely is.

Meanwhile other women are involved in football broadcasting, in a way once unthinkable and still sometimes decried. Sue Smith is on Soccer Saturday, with what my missus calls Josie and the Pussycats hair (ask yer granny), is sharp and cogent in her descriptions, reporting on Everton v Leicester and does the job with gusto.

Women talking about men’s football drives some unreasonable men to distraction of course. Female presenters are usually given a free pass by these people, because I’m not sexist, right, but tactics? That’s men’s work, luv. And the blacker you are the worse it is. Significantly, we don’t see any female pundits who are black, apart from Eni Aluko and occasionally Anita Asante. Given the torrent of abuse from the ‘I’m not racist, she just isn’t any good,’ men, I’m not surprised. Other pundits are Izzy Christiansen, Ellen White and Rachel Corsie, Rachel Brown-Finnis, Gilly Flaherty, Courtney Sweetman-Kirk and Karen Carney. I’d say all do the job as well as anyone, though for someone like me, who is increasingly coming to believe generally ex-player pundits are an out-dated concept on TV and prove themselves unnecessary most of the time, that perhaps isn’t saying a lot. But that said, the ire they provoke is usually ridiculous, bordering on shameful.

I did enjoy BBC’s Women’s Football Show. Good opening graphics which, if I was a kid, I’d have found exciting. Quite an updated Network 7-ish (ask yer mam) feel. Kelly Somers, an experienced broadcaster, presents in a smooth style, with former England boss, Hope Powell  and ex-Spurs defender Jenna Schillaci doing the punditing. It’s nice to see such a dedicated programme and it is very much the place to discuss the games.

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The League Cup semi-final between Chelsea and West Ham was on the iPlayer, comms were Ellen Ellard, a young broadcasting talent, and former defender, Lindsay Johnson. It was also on the WSL YouTube channel with up to 33,000 watching. I wonder if putting it on YouTube is an attempt to provide a context for the youth to watch.

Natalie Gedra does interviews for the men’s League Cup semi-final. I find myself feeling cheered by her presence. She always seems so smiley and keen.

Arsenal play Manchester City in the second League Cup semi-final, on the BBC iPlayer and WSL YouTube. I watched it on the Beeb. It’s stripped bare again, with just the commentator and co-comm Jen Beattie. The game was delayed for the lack of an ambulance. They filled the time with an Arne Slot/Gary Lineker interview. Filling a women’s football space with some men’s football content wasn’t the best look. The fact they didn’t have any women’s football content on hand at short notice said more than the BBC seemed to realise. They must have had some, surely. Imagine if they filled 30 minutes of a delayed men’s game with some women’s football content. It’d never happen.A lot of women’s football fans don’t want it to have anything to do with men’s football.

They shouldn’t need telling and they made a crass, insensitive decision that suggested when something goes wrong we turn to men. That’s not far short of offensive.

The game goes Man City’s way with a last-minute goal.

That concluded my week watching women’s football. At times Sky and the BBC give it the presenter and two pundits approach, as they do for much of men’s football, defaulting to their standard setup. While it’s fine – you don’t have to watch it – I must say the stripped-down games which just have the comms team are most satisfying and this is the format that needs to be leaned into for men’s and women’s football. Basically the presenter/pundit interaction doesn’t add enough to be the default, let alone worth an hour of build-up or post-match talk. Coverage is largely good and you can watch Italian and German football for free. In and of itself, it does a good job.

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