Not present on Sunday: anyone sticking a lit flare up their bottom, packs of aggressive young men high on rage dust storming the barriers or stealing wheelchairs, squadrons of Eastern European neo-Nazis attacking stewards. Different entertainment choices, then.
Two things I noticed, which are either progress or not depending on your point of view: some fans booed the names of opposing players when they were read out by the PA, suggesting the kindlings of tribalism that might both propel or poison the women’s game.
Certainly if the men’s Premier League big four/six do want to dominate it, there won’t be many Stewarton Thistles reaching finals in the future. Also, more cynical fouling and diving than you saw a few years ago in women’s football. Rachel Brown-Finnis, the former England international on co-commentary duties, noted with approval that Arsenal’s Katie McCabe had “been clever” in going down for a soft contact.
Brown-Finnis, and Sunday’s other pundits Katie Chapman and Fara Williams, have all replicated note-for-note that “yeah no as I say obviously they’ll be disappointed” sort of ex-pro landfill punditry of which the men’s game has, with dishonourable expectations, become less indulgent in the Neville-Carragher era.
All in all, women’s FA Cup football has its ideal home on the BBC, whose charter, ethos and unwillingness to bid for events that have expensive broadcast rights all contribute to coverage that must take in the social context rather than being purely about the on-field actions of the most effective football-kickers on the planet.
Do the next 50 or 100 years of women’s football bring equality? And does that mean a replication of some of the things that typify the men’s game in 2021: cheating, diving, grotesque sums of money, grotesque owners, the same handful of teams always winning, ethno-nationalism, hooliganism? Or can something be nurtured that is the same, but different?
