Is There a Way to Come to Terms with Football?
Living with three disciples of the beautiful game is driving me around the bend. Is there any escape from the long summer of footie ahead?
I know I start so many of these mind melds with a disclaimer, but I always think it’s good to establish ground rules. It goes without saying that football can be played and enjoyed by any person. My boys kick balls around with girls and they watch women playing football. The culture around the beautiful game is obviously in flux and the removal of barriers to all kinds of participation is a wonderful thing for anyone who ever felt excluded.
In saying all this, if we were to do an on the spot survey right now, it would still reveal divergent attitudes to footie, split along gender lines. Over 70% of viewers of the English Premier League were male at last count. There is still so much to be done to welcome women into the culture of football – from a lack of facilities and provisions for women at stadiums to the funding and attention the women’s game receives. But also we have to acknowledge that there are many women who were raised in an environment in which football wasn’t a part. There are also women like me who would never have been interested regardless of how inclusive the game might have been. Just to be clear, I also wasn’t interested in netball or hockey. Or any team sport. I’m wildly uncoordinated, lacking any kind of mind to body connection (thus the lack of driving license). In a sports context (and potentially in most contexts) I work best as a lone wolf. Long distance running was my jam; I’ve thrived as a freelancer.
Once or twice a year I can get gee’d up enough to watch some kind of sporting event with a beer in hand. I can just about watch rugby. I quite enjoyed watching the Superbowl at a sports bar in Brooklyn this year which is kind of similar. But broadly speaking, I would quite literally prefer to watch paint dry (happily did a lot of this over the bank holiday weekend). I have been fortunate in this life in this respect to have avoided nearly all contact with contact sports. Neither of the men who have proposed to me supported a football team; my dad wasn’t a football supporter and anyway he didn’t live with me growing up and my brother followed suit. My stepdad is a big Spurs man, but I’d moved out before he shipped in. Since my mum is equally football-phobic, the poor guy enjoys his COYS time solo in a soundproofed room.
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