The recent Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand has been hailed as a great success and a sign of the growing popularity of the women's game. But what are the challenges faced by the women's game away from the bright lights of the major tournaments? In this episode co-hosts Guy and Francesco speak to Carrie Dunn, journalist and academic, about the women's game in England and beyond. Carrie, author of several books on the Lionesses and on the history of the sport, including The Reign of the Lionesses and Woman Up, discusses the challenges and achievements of the movement in England and globally, from the glamorous Women's Super League to the grassroot game.
The recent Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand has been hailed as a great success and a sign of the growing popularity of the women's game. But what are the challenges faced by the women's game away from the bright lights of the major tournaments? In this episode co-hosts Guy and Francesco speak to Carrie Dunn, journalist and academic, about the women's game in England and beyond. Carrie, author of several books on the Lionesses and on the history of the sport, including The Reign of the Lionesses and Woman Up, discusses the challenges and achievements of the movement in England and globally, from the glamorous Women's Super League to the grassroot game.
Woman Up. The state of the women’s game in England
Guy Burton
Hello and welcome to the football podcast, which is an episode where football and politics meet. I'm one of the co -hosts Guy Burton and this is my other co -host Francesco Belcastro.
Francesco Belcastro
Hello Guy, how are you?
Guy Burton
I'm great and maybe because it's the first one we thought we'd just talk a little bit about who we are, what we are and what we're going to be talking about today. So the football podcast is a show in which we are interested in the politics behind the beautiful game from talking about big P politics, politicians, actors like social movements and their involvement in football, how they use the game for their own ends, but also how football itself reflects and represents our wider society. So the politics that happens in the everyday. Is there anything you want to add to that as well Francesco?
Francesco Belcastro
Now that's a great introduction. Maybe we want to talk a bit about our guests. Who we've got coming. What do you reckon?
Guy Burton
I think so, so you're the one with the list, so who do we...
Francesco Belcastro
I'm the one with the list. Yes. Some great guests. We're starting, well, I'll let you to announce today's guests. I'll lead that to you. So in the first couple of weeks, we'll have Matthew Taylor from DeMontfort University. Matthew is going to talk about the development of the game in England and around the world.
We're going to have David Goldblatt, sociologist of sports, who's going to talk about the politics of the game and the relation between football and the environment. We'll also have Clapton Community Football Club, the coolest fan on Club in the world, and this is my opinion.
We'll see if the listeners agree with that. Yeah, and next week, I think, one of my favorite episodes, I don't want to spoil it for listeners, but we've got Mel Young from the Homeless World Cup talking to us about what the Homeless World Cup is and what its social impact is.
Guy Burton
Yes, it's fascinating. And we've already done some recordings for the show. So we're looking forward to sharing these with you in the coming weeks. And we will have other shows coming up. Obviously, one of the things that we will be very interested in hearing from listeners is about topics that interest you and also the subjects you would like to hear about, as well as potential guests.
But let's talk a little bit about today. So today, we're going to be looking at the women's game in England and the challenges that women face, especially in despite the fact that the Lionesses won the European Championship a year ago, what they've been facing since then.
And to join us is a very excellent guest, Carrie Dunn, who's a sports writer and journalist and who's made a name for herself with her work on female participation in football. She's published a number of academic works on the subject, as well as other more mainstream work, including a trilogy that examines the state of women's football in England. Her latest book, The Reign of the Lionesses, how European glory changed the women's football in England, was published by Pitch Publishing in August. And it offers a fascinating insight into the season that has happened since the English women won the European Championship in 2022.
She's also got a new book coming out at the end of October, which looks at the challenges that women face in the game globally, called Women Up. And she has also been a contributor to the Raising the Bar study, which helps to improve the state of women's football in England and which we will come to in this episode.
Carrie, hi, welcome.
Carrie Dunn
Thank you so much. Thank you for asking me.
Guy Burton
Unfortunately, we do have to start, given that we're talking about women's football, what do you make of the whole Rubiales affair in the wake of the World Cup final?
Carrie Dunn
You know what, it makes me incredibly sad that we absolutely do have to start with this. Obviously, it is the biggest story in women's football globally at the moment. And it's just like, why have, you know, how we got to this point, a fantastic final Spain win there, maiden World Cup title. And yet, here we are talking about the behaviour of a man again. And not just one man, but an entire system in Spain that has created problems for women's for decades for generations of female footballers. And it's kind of a misnomer, I think, to be talking about it as the Rubiales case, because it's not just about one man and some terrible behaviour on the pitch in front of the TV cameras. It's about a structural problem that the Spanish players have been talking about for a very long time.
You've got to remember, this is a Spain squad that had players who did not go to the Women's World Cup because of the way that they were being treated in national camp. They went on strike, essentially. The generation before that, we had Vero, the Spain captain, speaking about the way the national team were treated. So brilliant that there's finally being some attention paid to it. But it's not great, I think, that we got all this focus on one man and whether he keeps his job, because it is so much more than that.
Guy Burton
Let's now bring it closer to home and talk about the English game. In your book, you discuss what happened in the wake of the Lionesses Championship win. I wonder if you can talk about the state of women's football in England today.
Carrie Dunn
Yeah, obviously it's incredibly healthy at the top level. And we know that the Lioneses are mainstream celebrities. I mean, you always know that you've made it when you're getting your captain on Graham Norton. You know, the fact that Leah Williamson is that instantly recognizable now, that's brilliant. I'm so pleased that we're finally getting this mainstream coverage, as mainstream celebrity. Brilliant. WSL, of course there's being investment made. We've got some very big Premier League clubs making investment in their women's team. We're seeing better facilities.
The thing that I always raise, and it's one of the reasons that I've done the trilogy of books that I've done over the past eight years now, is that it's not just about the Lionesses and it's not just about the WSL. It's about the entire pyramid. And the women's football pyramid is smaller than the men's football pyramid. It's got fewer teams in, fewer tiers to it as well. And I think there is an ongoing concern. Certainly it’s an ongoing concern that I've been talking about for quite a while now, in that it's all very well talking about increasing participation in football for women and girls. But the question is, where are they going to play? Facilities are at a premium. We see men's and boys teams booking them up. You know, these big legacy bookings that have stemmed back 20, 25 years. Girls and women can't get on the pitch. So where are they going to train? Where are they going to play? And this talent pathway through to the top of the women's game, it's still relatively limited. There are only really a very few number of clubs who have the best resources, the best facilities, the best coaching, the best infrastructure to enable the best players to come through.
So the question is, how do we cater to the best percentage of players? And then we also have this parallel question, an opposite question, how do we cater to the recreational players who are not going to reach the top of the game? Because men's football has this, they have the talent pathway and they have a huge network for leisure football, whether that's five aside, seven aside, nine aside, 11 aside, Sunday league, women's football doesn't have that. And because women's football at the top has increased and improved so rapidly, it's essentially ballooned. We haven't got that sustainable growth over decades that perhaps we might have wanted to see.
We've got this push towards improving things very, very quickly, which is understandable because there is this disparity in resources and disparity in numbers. But you can't just magic up football pitches, football clubs, football coaches, volunteers to run clubs out of nowhere. There's this kind of tension between what we need and what we want.
Francesco Belcastro
I was wondering what do you reckon is going to be the societal impact of this on Britain, on England and Britain more in general?
Carrie Dunn
I think there's a couple of things that I kind of hope for, or maybe in some cases, I'm concerned about. There's always, you know, when women's football becomes more visible, there's always this kind of backlash, as things, and we've seen it over the World Cup and we've seen it during the Euros.
There's a murky undercurrent of misogyny in society still. And this is not peculiar to the UK, it is globally. Leah Williamson put it really brilliantly, I don't whether you've seen this documentary. And she said, I don't really like watching fencing, but I wouldn't find a load of fencers on Twitter and tell them I don't like watching your sport.
So why do people think it's OK in women's football? And we do still have that, this kind of, whether it's deliberate or whether people think it is - in inverted commas - banter still, to be talking about women's football as if it shouldn't be happening at all, as if it's not the right domain for women to be in. I mean, one of the titles of one of my previous books on Unsuitable for Females, comes from the FA's memo to essentially ban women's football back in 1921. And there is still this mindset that women's football is still, you know, football is still on unsuitable for females, it shouldn't be being played by women.
So that murky undercurrent, the more successful women's football gets, is still there and it's still exposed. But on a positive note, I think working and volunteering at grassroots level myself, seeing the number of little girls coming into football, not knowing that there is a history of women and girls not being allowed to play football, that it hasn't been a space for them. And having no idea about any of that and just coming to it because they've seen it, because they like it, because it looks fun, because they get to run around with their friends. It's a wonderful thing to watch, actually, to see these small children with no preconceptions about the game, without taking all the baggage that somebody like me has from, you know, far too long, watching women's football and football in general and working in it. And to see that and see that enjoyment, see that empowerment almost, I hope that it gives girls, I mean, I hate to talk about role models too much because I don't think elite athletes should be lumbered with this too much. And I think in the women's game, they are more than the men's game. But to have role models that are inspiring, doing something that they love, that dedication, that focus, that commitment, that success.
So rather than going, oh, we play football, isn't that inspiring? We're role models. But the other qualities that come with it, even if these little girls who are watching with football or playing football don't become professional footballers themselves, they can learn a lot from the qualities that they see embodied in women's football being more visible.
Guy Burton
What you just flagged up about the history of the game as well. I mean, today's girls and boys don't come to the game with the baggage that you mentioned. So can you say a little bit about the nature of the women's game in the UK historically? Obviously, there was the ban in 1920, but what was the state of women's football around then?
Carrie Dunn
Yeah, so what we saw at the start of kind of codified, organized men's football in the late 19th century, you saw women's football essentially running parallel, not to the same extent, but you did see women setting up works teams, for example, you did see them setting up kind of leisure teams.
Now, often this was kind of like a novelty, it was a fundraiser, it was a charity kind of stuff, but it wasn't kind of beyond the pale. And then obviously during the First World War, when the men's league went into abeyance, and more women were going into factories, into work, and organizing themselves into football teams for their break times, it became more and more popular.
Now, I'm not saying it had the same number of players that the men's league had, because that would be crazy, but it was something that happened, and we saw exhibition matches, we saw these fundraisers, and when the men came back, there were question marks around the way the women's matches were organized, where the money was being accounted for, and all the kind of paperwork stuff.
But I think essentially there were still lots of societal objections and prejudices. One of the things that I come back to is I genuinely think in several cases at the FA in the 1920s, I think they thought, they weren't thinking, we have to stop women, we hate empowered women, I think they were thinking, we're saving these silly women from themselves.
I think they genuinely thought there were physical and medical concerns about women playing sport. And we still see that now, we've seen in ski jumping, I don't know if this is still the case, but certainly a couple of years ago, the jumps for women were much smaller, because, and I saw that someone involved in ski jumping administration was saying, they were worried about women, like they thought their wombs would fall out or something, mad like that. But there is still this, it's not something that's just particular to the 1920s, there's a medicalized concern throughout the 20th century that does still come in today that women are not suited for sport.
So we have this ban come in in 1921. But what I always say at this point is that it didn't stop women from playing, it just pushed it underground. It's very, very tough to play football if you're not being allowed to play on affiliated FA pitches. It very much limits what you can do. But these women did carry on, they were women who carried on playing, they played on rugby pitches, they played in pitches, they played on scrub lands, they were just finding park space, they were playing on school playing fields. So not affiliated pitches and not great pitches. And they were helped by male allies, even bright at the start. So they had men running the risk of being banned from their game for life for helping them.
And so it wasn't really, I guess, until the 1960s and after the England Men's World Cup win that they started to be more of a clamour for organised women's football. Because you saw a lot of little girls, as we see now, you saw a lot of little girls seeing the World Cup on television and thinking, I want to do that and then finding out that they couldn't do that. So it was after that that the women's FA was set up. And then after that, finally, all the member federations voted to take women's football under their control. But it was still fairly low down the list of priorities.
So the women's FA affiliated to the FA in the same way as a county FA would. It wasn't kind of like a parallel strand, like you men's and women's football that we have now. It was women's, it's just kind of a little segment over there and they can organise themselves because it's really not a priority. But to be fair to the FA then, they did provide a coach for the England national team, the official England national team. But that comes, you know, 12 months after an unofficial England team or the British independence, as they were called, went to Mexico for an unofficial World Cup. They came back, the coach was banned for life and the players, many of whom were still 13, 14, 15, were banned from playing for the next season.
So it's difficult, it's a checkered history. And one of the things that, again, there's a tension, I think, people don't realise that there was this ban or there was a stranglehold on women's football's growth. And people look at women's football now and go, well, it's not popular.
Guy Burton
So the ban ends in the early 70s. We start to have officially recognized women's football, but there's still kind of a prehistory to all of the current success and visibility of the game. So I wonder if you can talk about those two, three decades that after football comes back in the early 70s until bringing it up to date.
Carrie Dunn
Absolutely. So the first official England team plays in 1972. But again, this is not the same kind of England camp as you would expect now. You wouldn't have like a five day long training camp. You know, I've spoken to these women who were in the first official team and they would go along to trials and they were picked. Of course, it's all done by letter. And so they get this letter sent in and you've been selected for this match because they couldn't then go to training camps because they had full time jobs. They were kind of sent their training programs to get on with. So, you know, these women talking to me about them doing their interval training, which is fairly forward thinking for 1972, sprinting between lampposts on their street as they're running around the block, that kind of stuff.
So you have these fantastic women who are taking time off work through the 70s, through the 80s, through the 90s to represent England at the highest level at these new tournaments that are finally being set up. And they're not getting paid for this. They might get their expenses covered, but they're taking a lot of time off work. They're investing their own money into this. And they're getting very, very little back.
I mean, I've talked to Karen Farley, who was a fantastic player for England in the 80s and early 90s. And she's talked to me about kind of their camps when they did finally get kind of stay over at Loughborough, which is like a huge thing. But they're in a sports hall and they've got their own camp beds. I mean, can you imagine any of the England men's team ever having this? And, you know, fortunately now we can't imagine the England women's team having to do this either.
But this is not that long ago. This is within the last 25 years. It's not, it's not ancient history. It's when you go back to the 1990s. So yeah, we have this massive, massive growth coming from kind of like 2010 onwards after the Women's Super League launches with one of the aims being to improve the England national team, because we saw this talent drain. We saw all these young players thinking, you know, this league that we have here, it's been terrible. You know, all we're seeing is Arsenal winning everything, all we saw before that was Doncaster Belles winning everything. We need to go somewhere where there's competitive leagues. I'm going to get good coaching. So so many would go to Scandinavia. So many would go into the US college system where they can get an education as well, which is obviously essential when women's or wasn't professional over here.
And so it's only really since the Women's Super League has launched and the money starts being pumped into women's football that we start to see those professionalised standards, those raised standards. And, you know, obviously it's fantastic that people don't know that these years of struggle because they think women's footballs at the top table now deserves to be there. But I think when we think about it and people say, you know, they're not attracting the same viewing figures and not getting the same people through the numbers of people through the turnstiles of men's football, we have to also remember that really we've only seen this investment, this attention being paid over the last 12 years, as opposed to the previous 150 years that the men's game has always had the lion's share of resources.
Francesco Belcastro
On the money and the modern game, the modern women's game seems to be dominated by big clubs, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City that are sort of super clubs with teams, men teams. Is there a tension there between these super clubs and sort of independent clubs? And do you see this as growing as the game becomes more popular? It's not always been the case, right, that these big clubs are dominated.
Carrie Dunn
Yeah, absolutely. They're absolutely there is a tension. And it's something that I feel really conflicted about. I think it's great that these big clubs are acknowledging women's football. I think it's great that the best players are getting the kind of money and the kind of facilities that they should be having.
However, women's football does have a proud history of independent clubs, of women organizing themselves, of not being tied financially to a men's club. And we've seen in the past, if a men's club is suffering financially, one of the first things they're gonna do to save money is cut their women a drift. We saw it with Charlton in the late 90s, early 2000s when men got relegated, they cut their women a drift and only brought them back on board after an outcry and attracting significant more sponsorship to fund them. But we saw it also very recently.
And again, I talk about this in Unsuitable for Females because I feel like it's been forgotten about that Notts County Women essentially folded like a couple of days before the season started, back in 2017. Again, not long ago, before the spring season started, the men had a new owner and everything went very, very wrong for them. So we have professional players at this point, people who had uprooted their lives, people who had given up their day jobs because of this shift towards professionalization in the women's game. And suddenly, Notts County wasn't there anymore. So there is still attention there. I know that teams like Durham, for example, in the championship not tied to a men's club. We see Lewes doing things very differently for their men and their women in terms of equal pay in the championship. Coventry United being independent. London Seaward, if we go a little bit further down, they've been very, very vocal about not being tied to a men's club anymore because that restricts what you can do.
So yes, I'm so pleased that these big clubs are acknowledging their responsibility to grow their game in all areas. But I'm also really very proud of these independent clubs who have always been there, who have been banging the drum for women's football. And I hope they don't get kind of elbowed out of the top tiers of the women's game because I think what they bring and their new mindset is really valuable.
Guy Burton
I'm glad you brought Lewes up because I found what you wrote about in your recent book about Lewes. Normally, typically when you've got these clubs where there isn't both a men and a women's team, it's usually the women, and I use this in inverted commas, trying to catch up with the men. But in the case of Lewes, you have a very different setup where the women's team is outperforming the men's. It's much higher up in the game than the men's team is. And yet they're also talking about equality on all levels, particularly when it comes to pay. Do you think this is only feasible at a club like Lewes, or is this possible to be done with the Arsenals and Man Cities of this world?
Carrie Dunn
I think it's absolutely possible to be done, but I don't think it will be. Certainly not anytime soon. I think there are too many vested interests, too much. Kind of, we've always done things this way and it's just not going to change.
But Lewes, as you say, it's absolutely fascinating. Talking to Maggie Murphy and she's saying, you know, the women do attract the bulk of the fans and the bulk of the investment and the bulk of the sponsorship, but just sponsoring the women isn't an option.
So, as you say, in so many cubs, it's reversed. You know, it's the men who are attracting all this stuff, all the interest. And they're saying, no, you have to sponsor the women as well. You see, so with broadcast deals up until the past couple of years, if you want the men's game, you also have to have the women's game.
But with Lewes, yes, it's the other way around. It's if you want the women, you have to sponsor the men, too, which is really refreshing. And I think it also kind of brings home to the casual observers what female football has been fighting against for so long, those kind of attitudes of, do we really have to take them on board? It kind of brings it into quite a stark relief, I think, when you're seeing men being treated the way that women historically have been.
Francesco Belcastro
Can I ask for the casual listener, for people like me, where are they based? Where are they?
Carrie Dunn
They're in Sussex. So they're kind of not far from Brighton, Eastbourne, that kind of way.
Francesco Belcastro
Okay, great. Thank you.
Guy Burton
I also want to talk a little bit about your involvement in the Raising the Bar review that came out a few months ago in the summer. That came out of the Lionesses' demands that changes be made following the European Championship victory last year, and it was chaired by Karen Carney. You made representations to that. I wonder if you can say a little bit about your contribution to that and also about the nature of the report. Because what I've seen, it seems a little bit focused on the elite end of the game, rather than the community level, which we've also been talking about, and what's your take on it.
Carrie Dunn
Yes, so I'll hold my hands up. My involvement with this is limited. I sent in written representations and I basically wrote in more detail and a great deal of length. A lot of what I've been saying to you so far today, talking about the importance of the pyramid, the talent pathway, not getting sidetracked by looking at the top clubs and the money that's being invested there because these are the things that really concern me. So I wasn't called to give evidence. I wasn't kind of asked any further questions about it. So, I'm hoping that some of what I said was kind of considered, but yeah, I do share that concern that there is a focus in that report on the top level.
I mean, there is an acknowledgement, I think, that we need to think about the pyramid. And I think there is an acknowledgement in it that we need to think about grassroots. But as I said a little while ago, I don't think we need to think about grassroots simply as a method for finding future Lionesses. I think that is, I think that's flawed logic. We need to be thinking about grassroots as a place where girls play sport, but it's own, in its own right, in their own right, not to be successful professional footballers in the future, but because being physically active is good because football is the best sport in the world because of all the other stuff that you get along with being part of a team. Just all the other stuff, football isn't just about winning matches, winning European championships, winning World Cups and making a lot of money. It's so much more than that at its very best.
And I don't know whether the raising the bars reports remit was really to look at all of that because obviously they did want to look at, you know, how things were happening at the top level and to make sure that broadcasting and media coverage and all that kind of equal investment was happening properly. But I think it's dangerous that we don't, if we start to forget what grassroots can offer beyond simply a talent pool for professional footballers and future money makers.
Guy Burton
So the thing that I found also quite interesting in your book, because it's not looking solely at the elite level, it's working all the way down the pyramids to the community level. And you flag up, I think, a couple of examples of this in your book, you know, sort of London and Manchester Laces, maybe you could talk a little bit about them as well. Also, maybe listeners want to actually get involved.
Carrie Dunn
Yeah, absolutely. So Manchester Laces are one of the teams that I talk to in the book, and they're kind of coming off the back of some very successful London setups. And it's a very inclusive grassroots women's football club in terms of you can go along that regardless of your background in football, regardless of your level, because there are so many different teams or groups that you can join them to train with. It's going from kind of just casual kickarounds up to a competitive 11 aside team.
And what's great about them is obviously the women run so is women organizing themselves, which is really refreshing to watch a coaching session where it's not men screaming at women from the sidelines, which always sits very, very badly with me just yeah. And but it is all female run and it's not that they wouldn't welcome male coaches, but one of the things that they are very clear about is that anyone who gets involved with the club has to buy into its ethos. And if people don't buy into the ethos, then they don't stick around.
And because of the way that of its inclusivity in terms of kind of like trans and non binary players in some of their training groups. Obviously, when we look at the rules of different leagues, that becomes slightly more problematic in terms of the administration, but that's another conversation for another academic another day. And yes, the inclusivity of it and also in terms of age, you have some very, very young players and you have players coming in who maybe kicked a ball when they were at school in the 70s or 80s and haven't had a chance to play since. And now in their fifties, maybe they come in back to it. And that's a wonderful thing to see as well. Women who maybe would have achieved great things in football had they been more supported to do it in childhood, but now they come in back to it and they still love it and they're still getting great things out of it. And it's a wonderful thing to watch women organizing themselves, loving their football and just the diversity of people together enjoying their football.
Francesco Belcastro
Yeah, if I could ask you something on your forthcoming book, just by the title, Woman Up: Pitches, Pain, Periods, The Progress and Future of Women's Football, it sounds quite different from your previous works. So what is it about and what is the future of women's football? Not everything, because we still won't read there's two listeners to buy it, but if you could give us a few key points.
Carrie Dunn
Yeah, so this one, it was so fun to write. So I say, yes, historically what I've done, I've focused a lot on England, you know, it's where I work, it's where my journalism career is. So it's been something that I know very well.
But here I've been able to kind of cast my nets a little bit more broadly and look globally at some of the challenges that female footballers have faced just over decades and challenges that they still face.
As we've said, I think there's a tendency to think, you know, women's super league, the World Cup, it's on television, everything's sorted. It's really not. Once we go right down to the bottom and even at the top, we still have, you know, the ACL debate that we've been talking about for months and months and months now, the number of female players who have picked up anterior cruciate ligament injuries.
And there's still a huge question mark around the research that's been done, around the training programs that women's teams are doing, about sleep, about rest, about recovery. There just isn't the same data bank about female footballers bodies, certainly at professional level, as there are about men.
You know, it's absolutely ridiculous to think about. So we're saying, let's have a club World Cup for the women. Let's expand the World Cup next time round. Let's get more people in. But we still don't quite know the effect that the increased matches, increased training load, increased travel, all this kind of stuff has on the body of a professional female footballer.
So that's one of the things I was interested to explore, talking to women who have suffered ACL injuries, also talking to sports scientists about their work, about what they'd like to see done and the kind of research they'd like to see in the future.
And there's also stuff like, you know, something as simple as finding a club to play at. We've talked about that, the problem of resources. In terms of thinking about, coming back from serious injury and the support and rehabilitation, in terms of once you get to a particular point in your career and people start to listen to you, how do you use that voice? How can you start to stand up to fight for change in the future? And it was so interesting to talk to Karsten Pickett. It's one of my favorite interviewees in the book. The USA International, who was born with a limb difference in her arm. And she talks about her experiences. And that was brilliant to talk to her about how she's never wanted to be an advocate. But then she realized that she really thought that she ought to. And talking to FEMA footballers about the way that they do feel that they ought to use their voice to fight for change in the future was fascinating.
And also in talking to women from Scandinavia, Pia Sundharga and Annette Björgesson were both in the first Sweden team to win the Euros in 1984. Talking to them about their experience of that first tournament. It's brilliant. I mean, I've talked to England players about that pitch at Kenilworth Road in 1984. And it was just been raining solidly for about a week or something. And if it had been a men's game, it would have been called off. But because it was the women and they're taking time off work and the Sweden team have flown over, there wasn't the option to call it off. So they had to play in like six inches of mud.
So talking to the Sweden players who came from a country where women's football had a bit more attention paid to it. It was a little bit of a culture shock. So even going to go back to 1984, we see this kind of different attitudes to women's football globally.
So, yes, as I say, I think the I think there's a likelihood that a lot of people start to think, yes, women's football is doing fine now because it's got a women's World Cup. They make money. They do advertising deals. They publish their books. You know, we know who they are. But it's important not to forget the challenges that they have faced and overcome and the ones that women much further down the pyramid, who don't have the same kind of platforms are still facing because it's not and never has been just about the top level.
And it isn't about that in the men's game either. So more, more listening needed, I think, at all levels of the women's game and to have those requirements treated with grace and with respect.
Francesco Belcastro
I think that's a very important point. When is the book coming out? Just for our listeners.
Carrie Dunn
October the 26th available in all good bookshops.
Francesco Belcastro
Okay, well, this has been a fascinating conversation. Guy, have you got any last question?
Guy Burton
No, that's that's been very informative and hopefully we can have you back. There is actually just one thing that I would like us to say, Francesco, which is that, you know, we do need to get people who are listening to this episode or this podcast to review us, so, you know, to get us up the charts to make make pay more attention. But Carrie, it's been wonderful talking to you. We really appreciate you taking the time to share with with with us both not only the detail of the book, but also sort of the state of the game more generally.
Francesco Belcastro
Thank you very much, Carrie. Thank you.
Carrie Dunn
Thank you.