Make way, lads — the lasses want more of the game. Anne Coddington reports on the quiet revolution in the coverage of sport that’s raising the profile of women
IT IS 4.46pm on Saturday and the first results come tripping out of the teleprinter. Des, Trev, Gary and Stubbsy are familiar faces as the post-match analysis begins to wind its way into the night. Over on Radio 5, British radio personality David Mellor prepares to take up the mantle voice of the people on his regular 6.06 show. All very laddish.
But there’s a revolution afoot, lads: the lasses are hot on your tails. Take the best-selling football mags in Britain: the weekly 90 Minutes is edited by a woman, Eleanor Levy, while the first, and easily most successful (80 000+ circulation) of the new magazines, FourFourTwo is run by founding editor Karen Buchanan.
The broadsheets, too, have seen an influx of new talent, with young pretenders like the Observer’s Amy Lawrence joining such legendary veterans as Julie Welch. Even Football Focus, formerly the preserve of suave ex-pros, has its female face now, tough-talking Scot Hazel Irvine. And Radio 5, the football fans’ favourite station, is effectively fronted every Saturday afternoon by the much- respected Eleanor Oldroyd.
It is not just in football that the profile of the female sports journalist has risen. Laura Thompson, author of a best-selling book on horse racing; Kate Battersby, one of the most versatile of Britain’s sports writers; and Sue Barker, Des Lynam’s only serious rival in the smooth-links stakes at the Olympics, have all proved that the days when women did the odd bit of commentary at Wimbledon are long gone.
This year’s Olympics coverage — with Hazel Irvine, Virginia Wade and Sharon Davies also on hand — could possibly have been regarded as a watershed in women’s long march through this most male of environments.
It is a far cry from the days when Julie Welch, now a sports writer for the Sunday Telegraph, first walked into a football press box more than 20 years ago. The striking scenes in her semi- autobiographical film, The Glory, Glory Days said it all: dejected look on her face, no one to talk to, unable to get a phone to put through her copy, she looked every inch the lone woman in a man’s world. “For the first few weeks it was all right. They thought `She’ll go away soon’,” she recalls. “But when they realised I wasn’t, they started to think `What is this woman doing in our preserve?'”
The first 10 years of Welch’s football career were the loneliest of her life. It is easier now because there is weight in numbers. There is also a new generation of male sports writers who are more open to the idea of working alongside women on an equal basis.
“It is still a male world but it’s a much nicer world because you are part of the furniture,” Welch says. “And if I’ve done nothing else, I was responsible for getting women’s toilets installed in the press box.”
The new female writers such as Amy Lawrence can only imagine what Julie Welch endured. “You do feel under pressure at first to prove your worth,” says Lawrence, “but that goes for men and women. Once it’s clear that you love the game and know what you are talking about you will be taken seriously.”
Sun sports writer Janine Self agrees: “Journalists judge each other on actually doing a job. Once you are in that situation they decide whether or not you are up to the task.”
Working on a tabloid, where building and sustaining relationships is crucial to the all-important exclusive, is one of the hardest jobs for a female journalist.
“Most of the stories come from whispers in corridors. The lads get the big stories when they go out night-clubbing with the players. If I go up to a player and suggest going out for a drink it could be misinterpreted,” Self says.
But being a woman can bring some advantages. “Men find it hard to be rude to women. So even if a player doesn’t want to talk to anyone after a game, he might tell the men to get lost but he won’t say that to me.”
Colin Gibson, sports editor of the Sunday Telegraph, says women writers are known on the circuit as “fluffies” — light and bubbly, but lacking substance. But because they are at least initially isolated from the pack, they find their own distinctive style, which gives their work a freshness some male writers lack. He should know: he regularly employs an impressive line-up of female writers including Welch, Claire Middleton, Judith Palmer, Lewine Mair and Cathy Harris.
“Women look for the human interest angle,” says Sun sports reporter Vikki Orvice. “You don’t necessarily focus on the player, you don’t go straight into the football, so you get a broader view. You write about what someone said on the way to the ground, the music that was playing or something funny that happened.”
Although women do write match reports — Louise Taylor of the Times is reckoned to be one of the best analysts of the game — it is in the feature format that they excel.
The Daily Telegraph’s Sue Mott, 1996 sports feature writer of the year, Sunday Times golf correspondent Lauren St John and Sarah Edworthy of the Telegraph are all a dab hand at interpreting that amorphous thing called mood. And with the growth in coverage of sport both within the regular sports pages of national papers and in new pull-out sections, the feature article and keynote interview have new space to flower in.
While opportunities have been brought by the proliferation of sports supplements, particularly in football writing, far fewer women get to write about rugby league, horse racing or boxing. And there is still a dearth of female journalists stuck writing about women’s sports like netball, hockey and lacrosse. “I’m not bitter and twisted,” says Claire Middleton, “but I do feel typecast — `Here’s a women’s sport, Claire can do that’.” In fact she would like to tackle football or rugby.
As the profile of female sports writers continues to grow, it can only serve to reinforce the idea that women generally can be knowledgeable about sport.
As Eleanor Oldroyd says: “If a woman is in a pub and her boyfriend is talking over her, and refuses to let her make her point, she can challenge him: `How can you say women don’t know anything about football? Radio 5 employs women to present their football shows’.”
But breaking into commentating has not been so easy for women. The Murray Walkers and Geoff Boycotts look set to dominate for the foreseeable future.
“You have to commentate at local level to then go on and do it at a national standard,” says Charlotte Nicol, Radio 5’s football producer.
But even if women did come through at local level it would be a daunting prospect. “There would be so much pressure on the first woman commentator, she really would be exposed to criticism.” And with a perceptible shiver, Nicol added: “Thank God it won’t be me.”
Being reflective about sport is not simply a female trait. Soccer star Ruud Gullit’s popularity soared during Euro 96 because he waxed lyrical as a commentator about the philosophy of football, describing and comparing different styles of play in stark contrast to the more traditional approach of, say, Alan Hansen. It is surely not accidental that it took someone outside Britain’s football establishment — a black, dreadlocked Dutchman — – to add a different perspective.
People who come from outside a specific sporting culture can add a new dimension. “It’s not always necessary to be incredibly knowledgeable about football,” says Emily Boulting, producer of Sky Sports’ Soccer AM, “There’s room for more entertainment-led programmes, for people who aren’t obsessed with facts and figures.”
How long will it be before we have a female equivalent of Hugh McIlvanney? Julie Welch says it will be “hard for a woman to reach the position of quality and gravitas of McIlvanney. You need to be able to pontificate and have strong opinions.” And she thinks women are not entirely at ease with that kind of dogmatism.
But if Welch were a betting woman, there are a couple she might back as likely candidates for the sporting hall of fame. Her top tips? Sue Mott and Kate Battersby.
Anne Coddington’s book on women and football, One of the Lads, will be published by Pandora next year