The Scotsman - S2 Tuesday - Net gains and goals

In recent weeks, the beautiful game has looked less than pretty. Professional football has been generating an alarming number of headlines involving alleged sexual assaults, violence or financial troubles, relegating the game itself to second place. The FIFA slogan, "the future of football is feminine" has rarely seemed more appropriate or appealing. On Sunday, Germany won the FIFA Women’s World Cup, beating Sweden 2-1 in Carson, California, in front of a near-capacity crowd. The fact that this occasion, or indeed the whole competition, may have escaped your radar gives a good indication of the distance women’s football has yet to travel. But despite its absence from our TV screens, girl’s and women’s football is Scotland’s fastest and biggest participation sport.

On 13 November, Scotland’s women’s team will take on England at Deepdale, home to Preston North End, and the game will be broadcast live on Sky Sports. Placed 30th in the FIFA World Rankings to England’s 13th, Scotland are the undoubted underdogs, having lost 16 of the 17 previous meetings between the two sides. But you can expect passions to run just as high as when the equivalent men’s teams meet. From international competitions to the domestic leagues, women’s football may have a long way to go in terms of competing for the same attention enjoyed by the men’s game, but the foundations on which to build have been laid.

The Scottish Women’s Football Association was formed in 1972, and today consists of a Premier League with 12 teams as well as a senior league with three divisions. Development centres are open to under 18s and youth leagues run throughout the country. Around 4,000 players are registered with SWFA and many more women are involved in coaching, administering and refereeing the game. As executive administrator for the SWFA, Maureen McGonigle has seen the game develop over the last 12 years. She says there have been huge advances but is wary of saying this as people may think that there’s no need to keep pushing forward. "I think the major factor is working closely with the SFA and getting support from them to run the developmental and the international side of it," she says. "It’s also been a global growth, there’s an awareness throughout the world of women’s football, it’s not in isolation." She says prospects of a professional women’s league are a long way off. "I like to temper everything with realism, especially if you look around at the current financial problems within the male league," she says. "There are so many nuts yet to crack to be an integral part of football - to get the sponsors in, get the money in and to get the girls to play."

McGonigle says that the Scottish women’s leagues produce a pool of players which attract the attentions of managers from overseas. Scottish players can be found on the pitches of Iceland, Australia and England. Scottish captain Julie Fleeting was the first to be recruited by the US professional league, WUSA. "The World Cup in 1999 had huge implications," says McGonigle. "At that point, the final could have sold out five times over. It had a huge impact, not just for America, but globally." Scotland’s statistic of 4,000 players is overshadowed by the 40 million registered female football players worldwide, and eight million of these belong to the USA. Despite the obvious population difference, the gulf in both popularity and participation between the women’s game in the USA and Scotland has some simple explanations. Ask a Scot about women’s football and they’ll probably murmur something about Gregory’s Girl. But in the US, football, or "soccer", has never been seen as an exclusively male sport. When the 1999 World Cup took place there, crowd attendance at the final reached 94,000 and on the US team, stars were born.

Defender Brandi Chastain suffered "momentary madness" and ripped off her shirt to display a Nike sports bra. She and her team-mates were featured on the covers of US sports magazines, appeared on the talk show circuit, visited the White House and were given a ticker-tape parade at Disneyland. Chastain may have had her moment in the spotlight but it’s Mia Hamm who picked up the FIFA World player of the year award in 2002, sharing a podium with Ronaldo. Hamm is her sport’s equivalent of Michael Schumacher or Tiger Woods; her records include being the most prolific scorer in either the men’s or women’s game with 142 international goals from 239 appearances. The WUSA league has been acknowledged as being the best in the world, with an average attendance of 7,000 fans per game and television coverage that attracted more than four million domestic viewers. Most importantly, the league had numerous big investors such as Time Warner Cable and high profile sponsors such as Coca-Cola and Gillette. Having been held up as a shining example of how successful women’s football could become, it was a blow for everyone involved when it was announced last month that the league was suspending operations. Falling attendances at games and a shortage of sponsorship funds were given as the prime reason for the collapse. This has cast a shadow over the World Cup, but McGonigle says: "I know that WUSA are working on ways to try and save it, but whether it’ll happen in time for the start of the season I don’t know. I can say that I don’t think it’s dead and gone, I think it’s probably made some highly visible errors but now that they’ve identified them I’m sure they’ll go from strength to strength."

For Fleeting, it’s a case of remaining optimistic while acknowledging that she’ll just have to wait and see if the league gets back up and running. The 21-year-old from Kilwinning had spent almost two seasons with San Diego Spirit before returning to Scotland to play for Ross County. "I’ve had an excellent time, everything from the people I’ve met to playing in the league in front of the fans," she says. "Whether I go back next year or not, I’ve had a wonderful experience." She says one of the main differences in playing in the US has been the opportunity to train every day, but adds: "I wouldn’t say anything negative about the game over here because I’ve had so many great seasons playing and although it’s different, it’s still a good league to be a part of." Fleeting credits the people who are working at grassroots level with increasing the popularity of the game among girls and also hopes that her experience of playing professionally will inspire young players. "There are opportunities that you can go and live in other countries and earn money from playing and hopefully young girls can see that. At the same time, it’s not all about making money - it’s about enjoying playing."

This spirit of optimism in the face of adversity is something that litters the history of the women’s game, particularly in Scotland. The Scottish Football Museum’s history of the women’s game states that women have been playing organised football for at least as long as men, with reports of an annual match in Midlothian in the 1790s.

However, the first match played within SFA guidelines at Shawfields Ground, Glasgow in 1892 was not to everyone’s taste. Scottish Sport commented: "It was the most degrading spectacle we have ever witnessed in connection with football."

By the turn of the 20th century, the Council of the SFA was warning member clubs not to allow charitable matches against ladies teams. Despite being ignored and discouraged by the official bodies, the game continued to flourish. The First World War was a turning point as women’s roles changed across the social spectrum. Charity matches proved popular as a means of raising war funds and by 1921, a Scotland/England international at Celtic Park attracted a crowd of 6,000, although the impact of the home side losing 9-0 is not recorded. In that same year the Football Association delivered a crushing blow in the form of a ruling, which stated "Complaints have been made as to football being played by women, the Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged... the Council request the clubs belonging to the Association to refuse the use of their grounds for such matches". It took half a century before the SFA granted official recognition to the Women’s SFA in September 1974.

Jessica Macbeth, a keen footballer and PhD student in the University of Stirling’s Department of Sports Studies, has spent the last three years studying the women’s game. Having thoroughly investigated the archives and interviewed players past and present, she says: "I think one thing that stands out is that despite hostility and bad attitudes, if women are still playing they’re usually quite strong-willed and determined because they love it so much. What we don’t know is how many girls and women have been put off by attitudes and therefore didn’t play or stopped playing, we can’t reach them." Macbeth says that the loss of pitches in 1921 also deprived the women players of the partnership that had grown with the men’s clubs, something which had been vital in terms of publicity and support. She points out that when UEFA made an official recommendation in the early 1970s for the national bodies to take the women’s game under their wing, the vote went 39 to 1 in favour. That one dissenter in the ranks was Scotland.

By the early 1970s, Rose Reilly was one player who had decided to take matters into her own hands. Having played in youth teams, she says her dream was to be a professional footballer but she didn’t know how to go about it. Having heard of a professional team in France she called up the Daily Record, asked if they would sponsor her and soon found herself on a flight across the Channel. Within six months, scouts from the Italian league came knocking on her door and in 1974 she was signed to AC Milan. Reilly obtained citizenship and even played for the Italian national team, in a career that lasted until she was 40 and spawned "a love affair with Italy which lasted for 27 years". She says that although the game is more organised in Scotland today, there is less media interest. One thing that she says has remained constant is the pressures involved in being a full-time professional female athlete who is required to put her career before everything else.

"I think the history’s got a lot to do with it," says Macbeth. "It’s just tradition and women stepping into a male preserve." She says that although attitudes are changing, lack of awareness is still a huge problem. The other big variable is finance. "If it doesn’t happen in America it’ll never happen anywhere," says Jim Chapman, coach of FC Kilmarnock, winners of the women’s premier league for the last two years. "There is no way I can see there being professional women’s football in Scotland, simply because of our culture and the lack of investment in the sport."

Chapman puts the increase in popularity in women’s football down to investment and development at grassroots level for girl’s only, not to mention the commitment of coaches, administrators and volunteers behind the scenes. In years gone by he says, only a handful of girls would have continued playing football, certainly not enough to sustain any leagues. He points to the collapse of the American league and the funding problems in the men’s game as a reason to focus on developing the women’s game at amateur level, at least for the moment. Chapman’s team took part in the Champion’s League this year and last, but much of the funding came from the player’s own pockets, with some sponsorship from New Line products and a grant from the SFA. "You’re doing it because you want to push things forward and develop the game," he says. "Scottish women’s football has taken great strides forward through the developmental programme and the national team are progressing up the rankings, which is all good for the game, but how far can it go without more investment?"

At the SWFA, McGonigle echoes the sentiments. Asked why players are keen to go overseas, she says: "That is because Scotland is not offering them anything and it’s about time they did. They want to keep their talent here, be proud of their talent. But they need the support and they need people to put their money where their mouth is." Given the determination shown by women throughout the game’s history, with a little more support, we might even make it to the next World Cup.