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Football, She Wrote: An Anthology of Women's Writing on the Game
From the doyenne of football writing Julie Welch's brilliantly illuminating story of the first women's international match after a 50-year ban to the madcap tale of two black radio rookies in China...
From the trials of covering the soap opera that is Newcastle United to the glamour of establishing Real Madrid TV...
From the making of the magnificent Emma Hayes to the equally amazing Mums United FC...
Football, She Wrote is a first: a unique collection of 20 women's voices on the game they love. Penned by a group of experienced and new writers, and embracing memoirs, profiles, interviews and talking points taking in sexuality, diversity and inclusion, it is an anthology to make you think and feel, laugh and cry.
Contributors: Kehinde Adeogun, Isabelle Barker, Kate Battersby, Alison Bender, Jade Craddock, Hayley Davinson, Molly Hudson, Tracy Light, Renuka Odedra, Fadumo Olow, Katie Mishner, Christina Philippou, Jane Purdon, Ali Rampling, Louise Taylor, Julie Welch, Julia West, Cassie Whittell, Katie Whyatt and Suzanne Wrack.
Edited by Charlotte Atyeo: Curated by Ian Ridley
From the trials of covering the soap opera that is Newcastle United to the glamour of establishing Real Madrid TV...
From the making of the magnificent Emma Hayes to the equally amazing Mums United FC...
Football, She Wrote is a first: a unique collection of 20 women's voices on the game they love. Penned by a group of experienced and new writers, and embracing memoirs, profiles, interviews and talking points taking in sexuality, diversity and inclusion, it is an anthology to make you think and feel, laugh and cry.
Contributors: Kehinde Adeogun, Isabelle Barker, Kate Battersby, Alison Bender, Jade Craddock, Hayley Davinson, Molly Hudson, Tracy Light, Renuka Odedra, Fadumo Olow, Katie Mishner, Christina Philippou, Jane Purdon, Ali Rampling, Louise Taylor, Julie Welch, Julia West, Cassie Whittell, Katie Whyatt and Suzanne Wrack.
Edited by Charlotte Atyeo: Curated by Ian Ridley
267 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 21, 2021
9 people are currently reading
142 people want to read
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If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 29, 2022
This review first appeared at Soccer America:
Lisa was in the grade below me at school, but I saw her every day during recess when we played pickup soccer on the tennis courts. I remember how she constantly brushed her long brown hair away from a face that was red with the exertion of keeping up with the boys. She was no better or worse than the rest of us, and not once did we question why she was there. Yet neither did I question why, in all the years I was at school in England during the 1970s and early 1980s, she was the only girl I ever saw play soccer.
This was only a handful of years after the English FA lifted its unconscionable ban on women playing the supposedly 'global' game. That ban must still have been in place the morning that my grandfather walked me to our local ground in my hometown of Market Rasen to watch my first ever soccer match. Remarkably, the game was between two women's teams. I've no idea who they were or where they came from, but it's telling that they played in a tiny, anonymous Lincolnshire town on a weekday morning when no one was around to watch, or inform the FA of this illegal activity. It was the last time I watched women play until I took my daughters three decades later to watch the opening game of the Women's United Soccer Association at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.
Just as it's heartening to see how far women's soccer has come since the 1970s, it's heart-breaking to think of all the lost decades when the game was banned and -- for no reason besides the thick-headed prejudice of men -- women struggled for the right to kick a ball on a stretch of open field. This wonderful collection of 20 essays captures much of that struggle against the prevalent ignorance and bigotry, while stressing that there's still much work to be done in terms of acceptance and equal opportunity.
"Evidently we need to keep pushing boundaries -- and that is exactly why this book is important," writes broadcaster Gabby Logan in the foreword. In a piece by Kate Battersby, FIFA's Chief Education and Social Responsibility Officer Joyce Cook tells her remarkable tale of overcoming disability, and concedes that, "FIFA, like all sports and society in general, were late to the table with this. We're now writing the script. Will we ever finish the job? I doubt it." (You might flinch, though, at Cook's banal reiteration of the official FIFA line that staging tournaments in countries like Qatar -- where homosexuality is banned and women are second-class citizens -- is the best way to change people's minds. That remains widely open to debate given Amnesty International's report last month that thousands of migrant workers there remain trapped and exploited by the kafala system -- a disgraceful manifestation of latter-day slavery.)
Cassie Whittell tells the story of how, age 10, she formed a five-a-side team for a school tournament, but her sports teacher wouldn't let them take part on the logistically twisted grounds that ... girls don't play soccer. Yet still she forges her way into a soccer job after a life of setbacks and discouragement. Suzanne Wrack writes how Chelsea coach Emma Hayes garnered all the positive experiences and values of growing up on a rough housing estate and "took the atmosphere of unity, diversity and togetherness into every team she has built." Molly Hudson writes movingly about how soccer "is nothing, and yet it is everything" as she reflects on losing her mother, and how her "first true women's football idol," Fran Kirby, overcame her own grief and loss as a teenager to come back to life, with the game as her driving force.
"The importance of having a safe space to play and talk about football cannot be understated," writes Katie Mishner in her piece on the spectating experience for LGBTQ+ fans. Isabelle Latifa Barker reflects on the challenges of being a female soccer reporter, and asks us to "imagine any industry where people feel the commitment to the job would be so great that they wouldn't be able to have children if they wanted them." In similar vein, Louise Taylor tells of being snubbed and ignored by established male reporters in her early years on the Newcastle United beat. Both writers, though, also laud established coaches like Bobby Robson and Sam Allardyce who bucked the trend by offering them help, encouragement and, in one incident involving Robson, a sincere and public apology for a crass, chauvinistic insult.
Christina Philippou starts a team for moms, most of whom have never kicked a ball in their lives, lamenting that, "I was never taught how to throw, how to catch or how to kick at school, or elsewhere." Her team plays for fun without the pressure to perform or having to show up every single week. "If only sports had been like this at school," she reflects, "I might have got involved in team sports years ago." Tracy Light's concluding piece, 'Inclusive Football,' relates how soccer provides her teenage son Thomas, who has Down's Syndrome, "with the building blocks for a happy and fulfilling life. It's the key to his mental and physical well-being. It allows him to be fully involved and immersed in a community who accept him without bias or exclusion."
There are almost exclusively outstanding essays in this anthology, but I especially loved Katie Whyatt's piece on being a fan and reporter at fourth-tier Bradford City. "So often, I played football as the only girl," she writes, "and operated not with a chip on my shoulder, but a constant, underlying awareness that I was, as a result, a representative of all my kind. A mistake would not be mine alone, but would mean that girls could not, and should not, play football."
That made me think of Lisa again, going in hard for every tackle on the concrete surface. Did I think back then that every mistake she made meant that girls couldn't play soccer? Not at all. But maybe that's how she felt. And all the girls besides her who dared not even try.
Lisa was in the grade below me at school, but I saw her every day during recess when we played pickup soccer on the tennis courts. I remember how she constantly brushed her long brown hair away from a face that was red with the exertion of keeping up with the boys. She was no better or worse than the rest of us, and not once did we question why she was there. Yet neither did I question why, in all the years I was at school in England during the 1970s and early 1980s, she was the only girl I ever saw play soccer.
This was only a handful of years after the English FA lifted its unconscionable ban on women playing the supposedly 'global' game. That ban must still have been in place the morning that my grandfather walked me to our local ground in my hometown of Market Rasen to watch my first ever soccer match. Remarkably, the game was between two women's teams. I've no idea who they were or where they came from, but it's telling that they played in a tiny, anonymous Lincolnshire town on a weekday morning when no one was around to watch, or inform the FA of this illegal activity. It was the last time I watched women play until I took my daughters three decades later to watch the opening game of the Women's United Soccer Association at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.
Just as it's heartening to see how far women's soccer has come since the 1970s, it's heart-breaking to think of all the lost decades when the game was banned and -- for no reason besides the thick-headed prejudice of men -- women struggled for the right to kick a ball on a stretch of open field. This wonderful collection of 20 essays captures much of that struggle against the prevalent ignorance and bigotry, while stressing that there's still much work to be done in terms of acceptance and equal opportunity.
"Evidently we need to keep pushing boundaries -- and that is exactly why this book is important," writes broadcaster Gabby Logan in the foreword. In a piece by Kate Battersby, FIFA's Chief Education and Social Responsibility Officer Joyce Cook tells her remarkable tale of overcoming disability, and concedes that, "FIFA, like all sports and society in general, were late to the table with this. We're now writing the script. Will we ever finish the job? I doubt it." (You might flinch, though, at Cook's banal reiteration of the official FIFA line that staging tournaments in countries like Qatar -- where homosexuality is banned and women are second-class citizens -- is the best way to change people's minds. That remains widely open to debate given Amnesty International's report last month that thousands of migrant workers there remain trapped and exploited by the kafala system -- a disgraceful manifestation of latter-day slavery.)
Cassie Whittell tells the story of how, age 10, she formed a five-a-side team for a school tournament, but her sports teacher wouldn't let them take part on the logistically twisted grounds that ... girls don't play soccer. Yet still she forges her way into a soccer job after a life of setbacks and discouragement. Suzanne Wrack writes how Chelsea coach Emma Hayes garnered all the positive experiences and values of growing up on a rough housing estate and "took the atmosphere of unity, diversity and togetherness into every team she has built." Molly Hudson writes movingly about how soccer "is nothing, and yet it is everything" as she reflects on losing her mother, and how her "first true women's football idol," Fran Kirby, overcame her own grief and loss as a teenager to come back to life, with the game as her driving force.
"The importance of having a safe space to play and talk about football cannot be understated," writes Katie Mishner in her piece on the spectating experience for LGBTQ+ fans. Isabelle Latifa Barker reflects on the challenges of being a female soccer reporter, and asks us to "imagine any industry where people feel the commitment to the job would be so great that they wouldn't be able to have children if they wanted them." In similar vein, Louise Taylor tells of being snubbed and ignored by established male reporters in her early years on the Newcastle United beat. Both writers, though, also laud established coaches like Bobby Robson and Sam Allardyce who bucked the trend by offering them help, encouragement and, in one incident involving Robson, a sincere and public apology for a crass, chauvinistic insult.
Christina Philippou starts a team for moms, most of whom have never kicked a ball in their lives, lamenting that, "I was never taught how to throw, how to catch or how to kick at school, or elsewhere." Her team plays for fun without the pressure to perform or having to show up every single week. "If only sports had been like this at school," she reflects, "I might have got involved in team sports years ago." Tracy Light's concluding piece, 'Inclusive Football,' relates how soccer provides her teenage son Thomas, who has Down's Syndrome, "with the building blocks for a happy and fulfilling life. It's the key to his mental and physical well-being. It allows him to be fully involved and immersed in a community who accept him without bias or exclusion."
There are almost exclusively outstanding essays in this anthology, but I especially loved Katie Whyatt's piece on being a fan and reporter at fourth-tier Bradford City. "So often, I played football as the only girl," she writes, "and operated not with a chip on my shoulder, but a constant, underlying awareness that I was, as a result, a representative of all my kind. A mistake would not be mine alone, but would mean that girls could not, and should not, play football."
That made me think of Lisa again, going in hard for every tackle on the concrete surface. Did I think back then that every mistake she made meant that girls couldn't play soccer? Not at all. But maybe that's how she felt. And all the girls besides her who dared not even try.
April 16, 2024
Well this was an absolute joy to read to be honest, apart from one or two duff entries this is overall a fantastic collection of Women's insights into the beautiful game. It manages to cover the breadth of experiences, whether as a player, a journalist a fan or other aspects, each story managing to perfectly capture the right tone. I just loved picking this up and with each contribution being only around 10 pages long, it's also an easy book to dip in and out of, hugely recommended.
September 20, 2022
interesting
January 15, 2022
I’ve been a football fan for many years although never played beyond the odd kickabout with friends. My enthusiasm for the game waxes and wanes depending on loutish fans but when I get the chance I love to see a live match. Living in the North East, there is a lot of passion for the game despite the mixed fortunes of the local teams. When I was given the chance to read and review Football She Wrote, I was very excited. This is the sort of book that you can pick up, read one or two chapters and uncover a wealth of knowledge from a few pages. The authors for each chapter are well chosen and represent a diverse range of coaches, journalists and presenters, amongst others. The choices of topics were wide ranging, looking back at the history of the game but also looking at the progress made and work still to do, particularly for less well represented groups. As an adopted Northerner, there were pieces with a focus on some of our local sides which was great to read.
Football She Wrote is an absolute goldmine of information and any sports fan, in my opinion, would find it an enjoyable read. I hope that people won’t be put off by the chromosomal arrangement of the writers because they’ll be missing out. Mind, anyone who lets that put them off is a bit of a fool in my opinion! This is a book I’ll be getting for birthday gifts for those tricky to buy for sports loving relatives. As I mentioned, the format is a big winner for me. I sometimes struggle with concentration with non fiction but the style works perfectly as a way to unwind with a cuppa. Not too long but plenty of content. Wonderful!
Football She Wrote is an absolute goldmine of information and any sports fan, in my opinion, would find it an enjoyable read. I hope that people won’t be put off by the chromosomal arrangement of the writers because they’ll be missing out. Mind, anyone who lets that put them off is a bit of a fool in my opinion! This is a book I’ll be getting for birthday gifts for those tricky to buy for sports loving relatives. As I mentioned, the format is a big winner for me. I sometimes struggle with concentration with non fiction but the style works perfectly as a way to unwind with a cuppa. Not too long but plenty of content. Wonderful!
January 15, 2022
“Football, She Wrote” was published at the end of 2021 and it’s a collection of short stories written by women on football. Having grown up watching football at home, reading this book brought back so many memories: my first time at a stadium, being at Camp Nou watching FC Barcelona, my years playing five-a-side football, and how much I loved my team.
The short stories touch upon so many different themes and issues. Gender, in particular, due to the historical lack of recognition (and acceptance) of women in football. But also race, sexuality, disability, companionship, family and friendship. It taught me a lot about the birth of women’s football and introduced me to pioneering women paving the way to make this industry a safe and inclusive space. I loved this!
The only limitation I found is that it almost solely focus on British football and British players - I would love to read more about international women’s football. Also, certain stories were packed with clubs’ and people’s names - most of which I didn’t know - which made the reading experience a bit too dense.
Overall though I totally recommend it to anyone who has ever loved football - you will find a piece of your heart in there!
The short stories touch upon so many different themes and issues. Gender, in particular, due to the historical lack of recognition (and acceptance) of women in football. But also race, sexuality, disability, companionship, family and friendship. It taught me a lot about the birth of women’s football and introduced me to pioneering women paving the way to make this industry a safe and inclusive space. I loved this!
The only limitation I found is that it almost solely focus on British football and British players - I would love to read more about international women’s football. Also, certain stories were packed with clubs’ and people’s names - most of which I didn’t know - which made the reading experience a bit too dense.
Overall though I totally recommend it to anyone who has ever loved football - you will find a piece of your heart in there!
Read
February 2, 2022I really enjoyed this collection.
Twenty experiences of women’s football, on and off the pitch. This anthology offers a glimpse into football from a woman’s perspective …you wouldn’t think it’d be that different than a man right? Wrong. From the accounts of women’s football in the Victorian era which are hard to believe to issues in the present day which, if you can imagine, are even harder to believe. Tales of overcoming the odds, achieving dreams and all the wins, losses and draws in between…one thing never changes and that’s the passion for the sport.
Thank you to Random Things book tours for my gifted copy and the chance to read and review.
Twenty experiences of women’s football, on and off the pitch. This anthology offers a glimpse into football from a woman’s perspective …you wouldn’t think it’d be that different than a man right? Wrong. From the accounts of women’s football in the Victorian era which are hard to believe to issues in the present day which, if you can imagine, are even harder to believe. Tales of overcoming the odds, achieving dreams and all the wins, losses and draws in between…one thing never changes and that’s the passion for the sport.
Thank you to Random Things book tours for my gifted copy and the chance to read and review.
January 8, 2022
A fantastic anthology full of everything football & girl power!
On reading it, it certainly makes you think about the lack of equality & how football is still classed as a male only game.
I found reading this evoked so many different emotions in me, from laughing one minute to upsetting me in the next.
It's certainly a powerful reading experience, giving us as women a sense of achievement, something to be proud of.
On reading it, it certainly makes you think about the lack of equality & how football is still classed as a male only game.
I found reading this evoked so many different emotions in me, from laughing one minute to upsetting me in the next.
It's certainly a powerful reading experience, giving us as women a sense of achievement, something to be proud of.
June 24, 2023
This book resonated with me, "football was not really an option for girls in the late 70s & 80s"... so true. A fabulous collection of articles and essays that will stay with me. An important book.
October 9, 2021
Fantastic diversity of thought and subject matter, with brilliant mix of memoir, reportage and activism. A fitting tribute to the woman who inspired it, Vikki Orvice.
February 1, 2022
This was just delightful.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews