Clive Thomas approves

[Sheffields Finest]

They’d of given Casta Semenya a run for her money!

 

[Peter Grove]

Neither. When the ref decides to blow. Eg if the ref decided to blow but dropped the whistle, then the ball went in the goal, it's no goal!

This.

Anyone actually care about women’s football?? Never seen any game liveand wouldn’t watch it on TV if it was on! Just saying, good luck to all that take part but I’ve zero interest in it or who does what to whom! FA banned it for 50 years so they didn’t care either back in the day!

Lots of people care, especially those involved in it. If you haven't watched a top flight women's game recently (especially one between two of the top international teams) you should maybe try doing so - you might find you're pleasantly surprised.

And the FA certainly did care - according to all indications they banned women's football because it was stealing the limelight from the men's game and they were basically just jealous of the women's success. In the year before the FA banned women's football, the largest crowd at a women's game was 53,000 (with over ten thousand reportedly locked out) for a game at Goodison Park. The average attendance for men's games that year was 24,000.

Although the ban was lifted in 1971, it took nearly 10 years more for a women's league to be formed and it is only this year, for the first time that all the teams in the WSL (the women's top league) are fully professional.

So the modern women's game is still in its infancy as compared to the men's game, which has been going continuously now for more than 150 years. If you compare the level of the women's game now (with only 3 or 4 decades of development, and most of it only in amateur form) with the level of men's football in, say the 1950's (when men's football had been going for nearly 90 years) I'd say the comparison would be very favorable to the women.