Reporting on women’s football has been quite a journey – but there is so much left to do | Tom Garry
I am delighted to have joined the Guardian as a women’s football writer with the aim to cover the good, the bad and the ugly of an ever-expanding game
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The first time I reported on an England women’s international fixture from the press box in a stadium rather than from the distant vantage point of a desk in a far-away office next to a television, the Lionesses were playing a friendly against Italy in April 2017 at Port Vale’s Vale Park, a ground which – please forgive me, any Vale fans reading this – I think it’s fair to say could have benefited from a little TLC, compared to the facilities the European champions have become accustomed to more recently.
Such was the relative informality of the occasion, I found a parking spot down a rather poorly-lit side road in Burslem behind some rusting garages and quickly realised that one of the England team’s family members was reversing to try and fit into the small space immediately behind me. After the match – a rather forgettable yet interesting 1-1 draw attended by 7,181 fans – half a dozen reporters sat around a small table with chairs hastily arranged for an impromptu post-match chat with the coach, Mark Sampson. The BBC’s very dedicated women’s sports reporter Jo Currie conducted broadcast interviews, but that aside, it was a quiet press room. All of these things felt perfectly normal at the time, for the level of media attention the national squad were receiving.
