– By Flo Marks
On Monday 22nd November MEA Consulting went live on our instagram (@mea_consulting) with Evergreen Eagles Ladies Football Club speaking to Jess, Lily and Sam all things women’s football.
At MEA, we love how the world is changing to become more embracing of diversity and inclusion. It seems crazy and disappointing that women’s football and sport lost 50 years of history. Without the unwavering commitment by group of volunteers to successfully overturn the FA’s 1921 women’s football ban in the late 1960s – which was originally introduced as the sport was supposedly “quite unsuitable for females” – more years of fantastic football would have been missed.
Far from FA suspension, today the FA is more committed than ever before to create Positive Change in womens’ and girls’ football in England with clear transformational objectives to be achieved by 2024 including creating equal access for girls in their early years, clearer development pathways and for football to be a sport for all in reality; this includes football being embedded for girls in school setting with the target being 90 per cent of schools [both primary and secondary] in England to become part of the FA Girls’ Football School Partnerships network, supported by Barclays.
It seems it was England’s success at the 2015 Fifa Women’s World Cup which captured the attention of the nation, where the Lionesses won bronze – there are big and credible aspirations for the women to win a major tournament by 2024.
Women’s football is now seeing more coverage with the new Women’s Super League broadcast rights deal, worth £8m a season, has Sky Sports showing up to 44 live games – two fixtures per round – and the BBC one live game per round, with 18 of its 22 matches on BBC One or BBC Two. The other 75 games are also available on the FA Player. Increased visibility of women’s football generally has also played a role in drawing eyes to games, with 19% saying news reporting on women’s sport had made them want to watch games live or on TV and 41% believe broadcasting of women’s sport should be treated the same as men’s.
Big changes are taking place and today we will be talking to Evergreen Eagles Ladies Football Club about their experiences in the sport, the positive transformations taking place and the areas of improvements. A team all-women team competing in Division 2 Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire League. With their Facebook header featuring an Eagle player and the words “I kick balls. Deal with it.” It was bound to be an interesting and exciting conversation.
