The effective banning of women’s soccer from the 1920s until the 1970s squashed the sport to such a degree that it’s still playing catch-up big style. What would women’s soccer have been in 2023 if half a century ago it wasn’t even a thing?
In the years that immediately followed World War I, women’s soccer thrived in England. The men’s competitions, including the Football League and the FA Cup, had been suspended during the war and the women’s game flourished.
The FA legally couldn’t outlaw the women’s game, so it decreed that no football grounds of any football club affiliated with the FA could be used for women’s soccer. The NRL can’t ever hope to achieve that cut-through. Cathy Freeman touched something approaching immortality in Sydney’s Olympic Stadium in 2000, but that was a moment in time that’s never been repeated. Maybe until now.
Questions must be asked and answered about the obvious disparity in prize pools. The men’s and women’s World Cups are more equal in the sense of sporting competition than are the four grand slam tennis tournaments where men and women compete side-by-side for equal money. And yet, soccer’s present financial inequality is patent.
Balance everything up though and should players at this Women’s World Cup be playing for the same riches that the men played for last year? Of course they should, but then again possibly not. By economic and commercial measures, the women’s tournament does not generate what the men’s one does.
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