Swan Swan Hummingbird: January 2011 - Toby Scott's homepage

Last thoughts on the whole stupid Sky football sexism fiasco

Last Sunday I had great pleasure in sitting down to watch Blackburn take on West Brom live on Sky. I don't often get to watch Blackburn live in a match that we might win, so I laid on the works: Thwaites, popcorn, replica 1928 FA win shirt. Usually I watch football accompanied by 90 minutes of "we want CBeebies!" but this time the girls joined in with my carefully no-swearing shouts at the TV - all three of us were yelling "come on!" at times. Alexandra grew bored but Elizabeth stayed to watch most of the match and asked a lot of questions - what happens when the ball goes out to the sides? Why do goalies wear different coloured shirts? What does the referee do? And eventually we got to "do girls play football?"

In one sense she already knew the answer because she plays football at school, but in the way that all five year olds play football. So I said, yes girls play a lot of footlball. "But there are no girls playing today" i.e. on the TV. So I explained that grown-up boys and girls don't play football together but lots of women do play football and in lots of cases do better than the boys (e.g. compare recent England mens vs womens progress at respective world cups). And we talked about how I could take her to see a football match sometime (which is why I hope QPR are promoted - its nearby and we might win.)

Then Blackburn scored and there was a lot of cheering and throwing small children in the air.

So I had a great time watching Rovers pick up three points, but it was even better because I did it with my daughters, who afterwards kicked a balloon all over the front room (NB future England women's manager: Elizabeth has a great left foot; Alex is a solid ball-winner.)

Meanwhile, people who are paid a lot to talk about football were spouting the sort of garbage that we hoped had gone from our discourse - especially our sporting discourse - but we all feared had not. I'm glad the girls are too young to ask about the news, because I would not have wanted to explain why people say such cruel, ignorant things about the sort of football-mad women I hope they will be one day.

The problem has not gone away just because two people are now out of a job. But I hope this marks the start of something better.