How seriously would you take men's football if it effectively hadn't existed for 50 years.
Imagine.
1921-1971
No Matthews or Morty. No 1966, No Alan Ball. No Jimmy Armfield. No Pele. No Best, Law, Charlton. No Munich, no triumphant win for the Busby Babes in 68. No Jock Stein and the Lisbon Lions. No Dixie Dean rattling 60 goals in 1928, no school of science at Goodison, no Don Revie at Leeds, No Billy Wright and Wolves. No clown prince of football at Sunderland, No Tom Finney running through the water leaving spray in his wake. No Hungary beating England in 53, no massive groaning terraces after the war, filled with record crowds. No Ray Charlnley or Ray Pointer.
All of that is long before I was born and all of that is part of why football is what it is. It's a game built on history and tradition. It's passed through generations. My dad supported Blackpool, he took me, I took my son. I can quote the above off the top of my head, even though I was born in 79. When I was a kid, there was no women's football to speak of. Thus as an adult, I have no interest. That's why it's on now. It's not for you, it's an attempt to build a new market for football, that will pay off in 20 years time.
That's the FAs job. That's business. Identify an untapped market and exploit it.
You can't simply wave away the fact the women's game was cut off at the knees at the point it was becoming popular.
Why was it cut off at the knees? Cos the chairmen of clubs were expressing unrest at the fact women's games were attracting *bigger crowds* than men's games and this they banned it from being played at any FA affiliated stadium.
Comparing the two games is almost literally like comparing two runners, when runner a) gets level, runner b) kneecaps them then runs round the track for 20 laps whilst runner a) lies prone.
Then ask why runner a doesn't 'take it seriously' or why people don't support runner a)
There's nowt 'woke' in the above. It just is what it is.
Now, to the case of 'woke' sky. Sky is Murdoch company that is woke to one thing and one thing only - cash.
What it is doing is trying to address it's aging and falling subscriber base. Bemoaning the pundits changing is like bemoaning pop music changing. The tastes of the next generation (at least in the perception of sky) are different. They don't want a load of aging white men saying "back in the 80s, it was a man's game" any more than they want Jefferson Airplane on radio 1. Sky and indeed the FA itself are very aware that football supporters are aging, the average age of spectators is way higher than once it was and they're desperately trying to rebrand the game as something younger, more in tune with a broader audience because the more people who watch, the more money they make.
It's notable that there aren't many, (if any) less er... classically aesthetically pleasing female pundits. This isn't a woke revolution. It's just Sky etc trying to reach more people to future proof their investment.
What the fuck does Murdoch give a shit about 'wokedom' for? He's got literally no moral values at all. He'll do what he perceives makes money.
Me. I don't really care. Pundits are shit anyway mostly and I don't have sky. I'd happily have stopped the clock and Peter Jones on the radio and Barry Davies on the telly and kept it there forever cos that's what I liked. But time waits for no man (or woman, or gender neutral individual who prefers not to identify as human lol)
Pathetic!
They got 53,000 once I believe. I think at Goodison, but I could be wrong about that.
