It suddenly occurred to me that my daughters will never really know how lucky they are growing up with so many fabulous sporting female role models.
I had no where near the amount of sportswomen to look up to when I was growing up!
I remember cheering on Sally Gunnell at the Barcelona Olympics and the furore when Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean returned to the ice in the 90s. But there were no posters on my wall or regular interviews watched on TV.
I knew what was going on in the England Netball set up as I used to literally live for my Mum’s Netball Magazine coming through the letterbox! We’d never see Kendra Slowinski or Tracey Horton on TV or in the newspapers though!
I do remember The Sun sponsoring a County Team for the annual Inter-counties Tournament one year and they appeared in the paper (possibly not in the sports section though) showing off their netball knickers with The Sun logo emblazoned in them. I thought ‘how cool is that!? - how naïve was I!?!
My girls will have their pick of sports women posters to put on their walls - if they choose to do so! We have the England Netball team in Grazia, women footballers given exposure in traditionally male football magazines and world superstars like Serena Williams and Simone Byles smashing every glass ceiling that is thrown at them.
As well as exposure to female sporting greats, the attitude also seems to be changing which is overdue and very welcome! Gone are the days where women sports stars are sexualised in magazines, talked about in laughable tones or not taken seriously.
Don’t get me wrong, we still have a long way to go. But the tide is definitely turning!
We have professional Netballers for Heaven’s sake, never in my lifetime did I think I’d see the day!
I can’t help but be a tiny bit jealous to be honest!
Without meaning to be a pessimist I do worry about what happens when (and I believe it is a when, rather than an ‘if’) a female sporting icon loses her halo or lets it slip!
Tennis star Maria Sharapova admitted to failing a drugs test in 2016.
Recently retired World Cup winning Silver Fern Maria Falou is probably the closest Netball has got to ‘ a scandal’ with her support of her husbands homophobic views.
We have seen in men’s football enough ‘scandal’ to know the impact it can have.
Perhaps it is the way ‘the story’ is told rather than the ‘scandal’ itself.
For example former England Men’s footballer Paul Merson’s alcoholism and gambling addiction problems were recently written and broadcast about in a much more sympathetic and educational way compared to the headlines he endured in the 90s.
Women’s sport may have a chance to rewrite ‘scandal’ into more helpful and thoughtful pieces - although this means the tabloid press will have to come onboard! As I said earlier: there is still a long way to go!
I find it really exciting that Women’s sport has so much opportunity to change the sporting landscape in so many different ways - media and promoting our superstars as role models is just the tip of the iceberg. There are some great ‘trailblazers’ and anyone who listened to Claire Balding’s closing speech at the Netball World Cup in 2019 could not help to be moved, as well as inspired.
The Nations Cup could have been revered or ignored because of the earliness of the event in the 4 year netball cycle. World Champs New Zealand being part of the competition and the teams taking part by, being in the top 5 in the world, rankings would have indeed helped. I don’t remember a competition, not even the QUAD series, being so popular, so early on in the cycle though. With the greatest of respect the England Roses were of a ‘reserve’ nature, so the sold out stadiums, Sky & YouTube coverage and ‘buzz’, not just in the netball community but outside that ‘bubble’, is even more extraordinary and hopefully a sign of things still to come.
The NGB must take some credit for that. It won’t be easy to continue and even improve on the momentum of the World Cup, particularly with what, arguably, could be viewed as a ‘lesser’ product without our Roses Superstars. The likes of Captain Natalie Haythornthwaite & rising Rose Amy Carter are certainly filling the space as awesome role models to the watching masses! Long May it continue!
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