Time for an old chestnut
We all know that, when someone enters – or indeed re-joins – a debate with the opening words “With respect …” almost certainly they’re actually about to either damn with faint praise or else launch into a vicious rebuttal of the previous speaker’s point or position.
Even allowing for that, I begin today with the statement that netball is a female sport that I genuinely enjoy watching.
In some respects this is because of the very fact that, whilst for all I know there may be some men’s team that play netball around the world, overwhelmingly it is a game played by females.
It demands pace, vision, the understanding of angles, teamwork and – to some degree – specialisation in terms of who plays where in terms of the positions on the court. It’s easy to understand and, at the elite level, it is fast-moving, dynamic and has a certain beauty about it. I’m happy to admit – and this is definitely damning the very thing I’m trying to be positive about with faint praise – that, if there’s not much on television and there’s an English Super League netball being transmitted on Sky Sports then I’m more than happy to drop in to watch a half or even a whole match.
All the above posted, however, I wish to return today to the vexed issues arising of political-correctness, sex equality promotion and female sport.
On Saturday evening, after watching the wonderfully exciting and intense men’s Six Nations clash at the Principality Stadium between Wales and England, I happened to find myself at a loose end and chanced upon a broadcast of the second half of the equivalent female match on Sky Sports taking place at Cardiff Arms Park.
It won’t surprise Rust readers that the BBC sports media outlets continue to do their utmost to promote female sport by associating it, as best they can whenever they can, with its male counterpart, whether it’s Olympic events, football or as in this case rugby.
The average male rugby fan like me knows female England stars like Emily Scarrett (the talented, rangy runner and place-kick-taking centre), Katy McLean (former captain and fly half) and Sarah Hunter (the Number 8 and current captain) because they are regularly interviewed on television and radio programmes. We also know that the England women have recently become full-time professionals – in the sense that a core number of them have been given central contracts.
We keep getting bombarded with press releases about how wonderful the women’s Six Nations tournament is and how, amongst supporters in all the Six Nation countries, it is rapidly gaining a similar folklore bedecked with heritage and traditions to that of its male counterpart. Sarah Hunter herself has recently spoken about the great sense of occasion that is generated whenever a women’s Six Nations game is played at Twickenham Stadium after the men’s has finished, and so on.
All well and good, you might think.
Not quite – at least on the evidence of Saturday night.
I joined the transmission just before the commencement of the second half, at which point the score in the game, played in front of an estimated crowd of 3,000, was 38-0 to England. The news that the Welsh team was comprised entirely of amateurs came as little surprise because – despite all their huffing and puffing, and to be fair there was no lack of endeavour on the part of either team – it really did resemble a match played between amateurs and professionals, or (dare I say it?) boys against men.
In the end, England emerged the victors by the margin of 63-0.
Elsewhere, in La Rochelle, in front of a crowd of 10,806, the French women’s team put 55 points on Scotland without reply.
Frankly, the strategy of the rugby authorities and the PC Brigade in trying to market the women’s Six Nations as a worthy off-shoot of the men’s Six Nations (which in one form or another has been running for 130-plus years and clearly developed its historic contexts, its traditions and its following over the full course of that period) is bordering upon the laughable.
In saying that, some might think I’m just stating the bloody obvious. To an extent that might be true – and of course I’m doing it against a background in which the Irish men’s team beat Italy in Rome by as much as 63 points to 20 on Saturday.
My point is that – when it comes to major sports like football or rugby – we’re talking about females playing male sports and ones in which what be termed ‘male attributes’ are key: e.g. aggression, speed, physicality, strength and power.
That’s why, when it comes to, for example, my own favourite sport (rugby), the female version will never be viewed by the general public as anything more than an example of ‘women trying to play a male sport’ … and everyone knows in advance that they will never manage to do it as well as men.
It’s ironic really. I came to the computer this morning discussing netball. You might say that it’s a sport that places a degree of emphasis upon female attributes, but – if ever you were looking to set up a male netball team – it would never cross your mind to seek out men who possess ‘female attributes’, whatever they might be (deftness of touch, grace?) to join it.
