Transcript for: Maggie Murphy
What happens to you when you play football? How does it make you feel?
I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that, I think that the funny thing is that it makes you feel nothing, and I say that because you forget everything.
When you are on the pitch, when you’re running around, the only thing you think of is that you’re playing and that you need to be in a particular position, or that you have just screwed up a shot, or that someone shouting at you for something. So, I think that it is one of those experiences were actually you forget a lot of other things out there.
At the same time, obviously I am very competitive when I’m on the pitch, and so I think I was quite well known for even if we were four nil down with three minutes to go, I still thought that maybe we could still win. I’d be the one going ‘come on!’ and so yeah definitely that kind of level of competition, but never giving up, that was always something that was part of my game as well.
How did it feel as a girl playing football when you really it was a ‘sport for boys’ growing up?
Well, I mean when I was growing up I didn’t really have any opportunity to play, so the times that I did get to play were either in the garden, with brothers or cousins, or next-door neighbours, or when school would put in that once a year tournament, and all the sport girls would be like right we are doing this football tournament, are you in, and you would go oh, okay yeah.
I was never really conscious of not being allowed, because I was always allowed more or less to play in the garden, you know my brothers might make me go in goal for a while.
Are they older than you?
I have two older, one younger and one younger sister as well, so a big family. So, it was always big and boisterous, and when you have got such a big family, maybe there are fewer rules, so there is no one that is really Inhibiting you from doing something.
I think it was only later that my consciousness kind of set in, and I was like why am I not allowed to play or why are people making decisions about whether I can play or not, and so a couple of times at school and then a lot later at university, so there wasn’t any girls football teams, but at the age of about 13 I ended up playing for the only womens football team on the isle of white.
How did that feel to be playing with women at the time? Is that when you became more conscious?
So, it was down to a teacher, a teacher in particular. I think I had a bit of a moan one time, and said why are there no girls’ teams, I love this sport, I loved all sports, but I really loved football. You know, you throw yourself in and it is quite physically, and I hated how precise everything was in netball, and 2 yards back, and I was like but I want that ball, I want to get stuck in.
So, this one teacher said to me well fine yeah, there aren’t any girls’ teams but there is a womens football team, you should go there, and I was like I can’t do that you know, I’m just a little girl. But, I ended up going along and yeah just threw myself in, and I was conscious that I was young. At that time, it was proper grassroots football, so there were players in their teens, twenties, thirties, and forties, so I was young, but I’m also a little bit stubborn maybe, and just thought I was playing well and that was fine.
But, definitely sometimes our Football Association would decide whether we were allowed to go and play games, like tournaments, and I just felt like sometimes we were stopped from playing and I didn’t understand why these anonymous old men in suits were kind of not allowing us to play, when they hadn’t come to talk to us about it, and whether we wanted to play.
So yeah, I think that is definitely when the consciousness started to seep in, and then definitely at university, I saw lots of inequalities and that was frustrating then.
We are sat in your beautiful stadium, and I think you played here as a child?
Yeah, actually that was my first ever game, my first ever 11 a side game was at this ground that we are looking at right now.
Its so strange, it is so circular. The funny thing about that game was that I was too young to play, at the time you had to be 14 to play adult football, so I played under somebody else’s name and I scored three goals, two up there, and one in there, and I still remember it.
I mean, back in that time this stand didn’t exist, this stand that we are sitting in at the moment wasn’t here, it was a long wooden shed, so I have these memories imprinted, and when I came here for the first time as an adult, I said to somebody this looks different, was there a long wooden green shed, and they said yeah exactly.
I think I played twice here, but I remember the first time because it was my first ever game.
And, you talked about playing then and then playing at university, did you ever consider playing professionally? Was that an option for you?
So, when I was about 16 I was in the regional squad, Hampshire and the Isle of White, and we won the national cup two years running, and at the time our coaches, who were fantastic, one of them in particular, Julie Way, she said oh there is this opportunity for getting a scholarship in the US and I remember saying to her, oh no you don’t understand, I’m academic, like sport is for other people, playing football you know sorry that is what other people do, I’m going to be doing my GCSE’s and I’m going to do my A levels, and I will probably go to university, so for me it was never really a career choice, ever.
Also, I was quite happy with it being a separate thing, I always had a curiosity about other things, and for me football was this brilliant thing that I did at the weekends, and I put a lot of effort and energy into it, and it has obviously become a big part of my life now, but it was always something on the side.
I mean I wasn’t super, super talented; I mean I played well, I was always effective, but I wasn’t a really talented player, but if I had been growing up in a different part of the country, yeah, my history might have been quite different.
Maybe, if I was close to a big club, that had a proper training academy, I mean for me I ended up playing a few seasons with the Isle of whites, and then I followed that coach over to play on the main land, so I had to take a boat to training, I boat to home games, a boat to away games. So, for me to have really progressed as a teenager, I would have had to of lived somewhere else.
You have had the most extraordinary career path, so not typical potentially for someone in football, but you have worked with amnesty international, and many other human rights organisations, I’m really interested to know where that passion for justice and equality and social change came from?
I mean I don’t really know, but I do know that it was there from the beginning. I would probably credit my parents, my family, for that kind of sense of justice, big catholic family, so lots of principle and values kind of instilled form a young age.
But, I was also curious about the world, I always wanted to go somewhere. So, I took a year out before I went to university and this is a bit embarrassing now, but I picked a country that I had never heard of and I spent about nine months living in Tanzania, it was lovely and I had such a wonderful time, and that opened up my eyes to the world and made me value things like health and education in a way that I had never really valued it, even though I had gone through school and got grades and things.
I think the justice thing, I think there is some inherent part of me that feels really strongly about fairness, and when I saw things that weren’t fair it would really get to me. Now, when I reflect back, that were little things that I did when I was at school as a kid, or in my Saturday job, where I was like oh wow, I took that on for the team didn’t I, being age 15 or 16.
I’ll give an example, I remember this I was working as a waitress in a kind of rubbish bar, restaurant, I was only about 15 or 16, and I had been there for almost a year, a Saturday job, and the new set of waitresses came in, who were 15, so I was 16 by this time, and I was on £3.60, the minimum wage at the time, the minimum wage was going to change, but it hadn’t – this is a really long story, but it is really funny – and the new waitress that came in, were on £3.75, but we have been there for a year and we were on £3.60 and eventually I was like ‘don’t worry team, I’ll go and talk to the management’, and I remember going and I was quite nervous because when you’re 15 or 16, it is not normal for you to challenge authority, so I ended up kind of taking one of the mangers to one side, and saying I didn’t think this was particularly fair, and his response was ‘oh my gosh, of course, I will bring them down to £3.60 immediately’, and then I was like no, no, no, oh my gosh, all the new waitresses are going to hate me!, and I was like ‘no you don’t understand’.
What was the outcome?
We were all given a raise to £3.75, I got that extra 15 pence an hour.
But, yeah so I think I was often a spokesperson.
In terms of your career path, so at university what did you study?
I went to Oxford university, and studied French and linguistics, in my third year again all my friends were going to Paris or to Nice or something, and I was like but I can go there anytime, so I ended up spending half the year in the French Caribbean, so a tiny little island, Guadeloupe, and then half the year I spent in Senegal, in West Africa, so again I was trying to find other experiences.
I have always been kind of curious about what else is out there, and just being very aware that if you have got time you can use it to do really cool exciting things, and you can go to Paris anytime!
And then from then, you did a masters as well?
Actually, I finished university and lived in Rwanda for a year, so being in Rwanda and seeing a country that was recovering from a genocide that switched me into the human rights world, because they were doing a lot of things on stabilising the country, and lots of educational initiative, and lots of health initiatives, and yet people couldn’t speak freely.
It suddenly switched me on, I was almost like well does education and health matter, if you can’t have a conversation about politics openly. So from there, I started to do a lot more in human rights, came back and did a masters at the London School of Economics, and so that was in international development, but it had a lot on conflict, war, refugee issues, and obviously politics and economics, and from there I started to work in human rights.
You were almost seven years at Transparency International, so can you tell us a little bit about that organisation and your roles there?
Yeah, so Transparency International, is the world’s biggest anti-corruption organisation, so lots of people know about amnesty on human rights, Transparency International is kind of the equivalent but on corruption.
It’s such an interesting topic, looking at how people abuse power, and it connected the international development work that I had done, where it felt like there was inequal distribution of resources or goods, and then you are looking at the human rights, which is all about people using their power to violate each other’s rights, then you have this anti-corruption element where you have people in power that were using laws, and businesses, and different mechanisms to steal resources in a huge way.
My particular area that I worked on a lot, was on money laundering, and the use of shell companies, and the UK, and rich countries roles in taking resources from other countries. So, we tend to think that corruption is a kind of African issue, or a Chinese issue, or even a Russian issue, without looking at the role that UK banks play, or the City of London plays, or lawyers, or accountants, so a lot of my work was again trying to introduce standards on an international level that could trickle back down, and require greater transparency, accountability, and integrity from governments and businesses.
Then you sort of moved into the sports field, in terms of you were head of public policy at Sport Integrity Global Alliance, were there any issues, I guess big issues around sport and integrity that were a surprise to you at the time?
So, I think for me the watershed moment, and this is the start of my journey into football. I was working at transparency international when the FIFA scandal hit, in 2015, and it wasn’t a surprise to me. Partly, because I was doing a lot of work on money laundering, and corruption and I could see how an organisation had removed itself from other accountability measures, could become embroiled in corruption scandals, but I also wasn’t surprised because I had already come across lots of women playing football internationally, because I had moved around so much, so had first-hand account of corruption.
One particular women that I met, her story will always stick in my mind, it sounds quite minor, but I think it was quite big for me, she was in Lebanon, and her team had won the league or won the cup, and they were in the changing room after the game, and her team was celebrating because they didn’t have that much money, and so they were like what are we going to do with this cash, because they had literally been given this cash, so they were like we can spend it on a new kit, do this, do that, and then a man walked in from their Football Association, took the envelope of cash and said I’ll look after this for you, and then just walked out, and of course they never saw the money again.
When I heard this story, I was so angry, how dare that guy do that? Like what motivated him, what allowed him to think he could walk into that room, with all those women, and just take the thing that they had rightfully won on their own terms, and so those kind of stories I was hearing a lot, and when the FIFA scandal hit, everything was just so much clearer to me, by that time I has played competitively for about 20 years or so, but everything was so difficult, everything, from the lack of opportunity so for me, living on the Isle of White, and no girls teams, to having people make decisions about whether I was allowed to play in a tournament or not, to whether I was wearing a kit that fitted me, or not, all those decisions and like where do the resources come from, where does the money come from, why is there no investment in girls football, why is there no investment, all these decisions were being made by men that all looked the same, sounded the same, and didn’t really care at all about me.
So, I think for me the FIFA corruption scandal was really big, and I thought there is some really serious injustice here. I guess the FIFA corruption scandal for me, was my personal life, and my professional life smashed together.
In 2017 you helped establish equal playing field, so can you tell us a little bit of the story behind the charity, and setting it up?
So, at about this time, I realised I was getting quite angry, so my work with very international, flying around a lot and I’m very deeply committed to the issues, but I couldn’t get rid of this niggling feeling about why it was so unfair, the lack of investment, the lack of opportunity, the lack of respect for women in sports, in particularly football, and I suddenly realised that I wasn’t the only one that was angry, because I’d lived in so Internationally, paths crossed and I ended up becoming good friends and quite close with another bunch of women, and two women in particular who really founded equal playing field, and I came on a little bit afterwards, Laura Youngson, and Erin Blankenship,so the two of them had this crazy idea, to do something phenomenal that no one could kind of class as a B version of mens sports, you know that kind of brackets ‘women’ kind of thing, and they wanted to set a Guinness World Record.
So, this once and for all we will show them, and it will brilliant, it will be great and we will have made a statement, and so we decided to climb to the top of mount Kilimanjaro it took us about six days, and once we got to the top, having had this horrible climb in the dark for like five/six hours, in the rock and the ice, we set up a full size pitch and played a full 90 minute game at the top.
It was a really rubbish game, really poor standard, it was 0-0, you know and you were kind of gasping for air.
In order for it to be a Guinness World Record, it had to be a full 90 minutes, it had to be a full size pitch, it had to have regulation goal posts, and we had to have FIFA referees, and so all the referees and all the officials were also women, and the women that we worked with, we were from all over the world. So, we had players from Saudi Arabia, from Mexico, from Canada, France, Tanzania, Nepal, you know and we had some former professional players, we have a former US international, former Canadian international, former French international, former England player Rachel Unitt, as well as grassroots players.
It was really important to us that it was not only elite players, as well as grassroots players, but that they were from all these different countries, and all these different religions as well, and backgrounds, and it was fantastic.
Whilst we were climbing, I mean there is obviously no mobile phones or anything, and there is no network, so you have really good, long conversations, and we realised that this was start of something, not the end.
So, at that time, equal playing field was our kind of band name, we hadn’t set it up, we hadn’t done anything. We have now got four Guinness World Record to our name, so we do these bug events, but it is not really about the event, it is about brining these people together, and awareness, getting a bit more media attention for the cause, I guess.
The last one that we did was in Leon, during the womens world cup, and we got two Guinness World Records actually, one for the largest number of nationalities in a single game, so I think we had about 60 different nationalities, and the other one was for the biggest five a side game ever. So, obviously it is 5-a-side, but you can have roll on subs, and so we had 822 players, play over the course of three days, night and day, none stop, it couldn’t stop during the heat wave in France which was shocking.
The whole point was, we brought all these players from around the world and we ran these workshops, and we had a summit where we brought people together, so it was very much like catalysing ideas and people taking ownership about what they are going to do when they go home.
Things like, film and photography how can you capitalise on this back in Mexico, to get sponsorship. We also had grassroots coaching sessions, a big mix of get together, get all this energy together, and then go back out to the different countries around the world.
And, we do talk a lot about the difficulty of young women in Britain in terms of playing football, and access to football, and clearly women elsewhere in the world, face much, much larger challenges, and I know again FIFA and UEFA have these huge figures showing massive growth in participation, but that doesn’t really tell the whole story. So, who is missing out on football at the moment?
I think the first thing that everyone needs to know, is that there is womens football everywhere, and when I first went to Tanzania aged 17/18 I played for a team out there, and I had the most wonderful season playing for my team, getting to a national cup final, in a stadium that had 3,000 people cheering along.
So, in some ways I don’t want anyone to think that you know around the world there is nothing happening, because actually in some ways what I saw was these incredible women out there that were facing a lot of social pressure not to play football, but they were training everyday despite that. So, they were super strong, they were super strong women.
And well supported?
Again, it was all really fascinating because the crowds would gather kind of to jeer, and then bit by bit as the game went on they were cheering, you know the jeers had turned to cheers and I think that is the magic around a sport, and also the power the sport can have.
Those people are coming and specifically were wanting to laugh at these women, and then were wrapped up in the game, because you can’t watch a game and not get into it. So, there was a bit of power there, a lot of the players there were dealing with pressure from parents, from family members, from society.
I mean also played in Rwanda for a while, and sometimes people would just line the place where you were playing, and just laugh and shout at you, but I have also had that experience in England where boys, literally boys, that might be younger than you, are literally shouting insults at you.
So, I think there are commonalities, I think it is really important that we realise there are commonalities across the world in these challenges that we face, which is why we talk about opportunity, equality, respect, they are the same challenges just to different degrees.
I think there are structural issues where you have federations that are not supporting their womens team, not investing. It is the easiest budget line to steal isn’t it, especially when there is such little scrutiny and such poor governance in some of the football associations around the world as well, it is the easiest pot to steal from.
So, you joined Lewes FC, less than a year ago now, coming up to a year, what took you from working in this big, global, anti-corruption role, to working in womens football?
Yeah, well a lot of my old colleagues, even my family members are like what are you doing? You had this career, where you were at the UN, and then G20, and doing all this cool, stuff, and now you are running a football club, sorry what?
First, of all Lewes is really special. I wouldn’t be at another football club. I think what Lewes is trying to do is revolutionary. A couple of months after I came back from the mountain, Kilimanjaro in 2017, I had heard on social media, this plucky little club that had taken the decision to split its revenue equally between the men and the women.
A lot of people talk about pay parity; it is actually a lot more than that. So, yes our playing budgets are the same, but actually it is about splitting the revenue equally, so we have the same marketing budgets for example.
People get hung up on equal pay, but if you have the same marketing budgets, we both play on the same pitch, we have the same training facilities, when decisions are made, it is not a case of what do the men want, and then what do the women want, it is a case of having everyone round the table and deciding what happens.
I saw this club do this thing, introducing equal pay, and I just thought wow, so many people talk about it, and this little club has just decided to do it. I remembered the club, because I was like that’s Lewes, is that the team that I played against 20 years ago.
So, I kept my eyes on them, and in fact what I did at that time was you know I just supported what they were doing this whole principle of it, but also you could become an owner of the club, and I remember at the time thinking, wow this club is also 100% fan owned, and some immediately I just clicked, and became an owner in 2017, and I remember thinking to myself, I will probably never go down, I’m not really interested in their results, but I just want them to know that I back them, and I can do that by paying £40 a year, brilliant, okay fine.
It is one of those things where sometimes you know you give to charity, or you do something because you know you can’t do much else but you know that you can do that. So, that is how in felt at the time, I mean I honestly, never, ever thought that I would end up working here.
But, I guess from then, and with equal playing field, my paths started to cross every so often with Lewes because they were being revolutionary, so the first time I met them face to face was at a meeting with Twitter who were backing our world record attempt in France, and so they said, oh we are also supporting this club Lewes FC, and I said oh I can I meet them.
So, we had a meeting together, and the was the first time that I met them, and yeah so it was only earlier in 2019, it was about this time last year actually, that I got a phone call saying hey would you be interested in maybe taking over the General Manager role.
I remember I just laughed, I said no, no, no, I bit like when I think about a bit like when I was asked do you want to get a scholarship to play in America, I was like oh, no, no that is not what I do, I’m this other thing.
And you got the role of General Manager, first of all was that a new role, what is that role?
Yeah, so the General Manager its quite specific to womens football in the UK, but also you see General managers in the US for soccer clubs. So, the classic manager that everyone knows, stood by the side of the pitch, shouting and screaming, so it is the off-pitch equivalent.
So, I work really, really closely with our manager, he deals with the team, and he deals with obviously the tactics, I don’t get any say on that, I’m in the back-room kind of dealing with, well dome of it is kind of just how to run a team, so transfers, contracts, they are all members of staff right, so you just have to manage that side of it, but also you have loads of requirements to fulfil as part of the league. So, where the women are in the Championship, we have very high standards that we need to adhere to, to maintain our licence, so there’s legal issues, but also there is sponsorship, marketing.
The thing with Lewes was that they were very clear that they wanted a General Manager, that was also going to be outspoken on the gender equality things.
They got that didn’t they!
Yeah, they said that is why they approached me, it was kind of like we want you to run the club, but we are going to support you. So, I have a brilliant assistant general manager, Lynne, and the idea was that she would help with a lot of that side of the work so you are able to then push for things.
Forward thinking of them to invest in that?
Yeah, super forward thinking in everything that they do, and Lewes gets talked a lot about again on the equality side, and the pay parity, but actually we do a lot more than that.
We were approached to receive funding, like we were approached for sponsorship from a gambling company, so we rejected it, we refuse to take any gambling money, and instead what we did was we put charity called gambling with lives that support families who have lost loved ones to suicide which has been related to gambling, so we put their logo on our shirts instead.
At the moment we are working with parliamentarians to bring in a charter that we would ask as many clubs around the country to sign that says they will not take money from gambling companies, but also a range of other things that I think lots of clubs could sign up too because the normalisation of gambling in this country, and its link to football is astounding and it is fast as well. If you even go back 10 years ago you didn’t see as much gambling advertising at all, but now more than 50% of clubs in the Premiership and the Championship, have shirts sponsors that are gambling companies, let alone the stuff around the edge of the pitch and let alone what you see in computer games because it transfers over into computer games as well.
So, we have seen this gradual spread. You know, there is ten 10-year olds that are not allowed to gamble, but for them gambling is very normal natural part of their football experience.
I recently set up Twitter for The Game Changers podcast, and I put in womens sport, and then twitter gives you all the recommendations of people you should follow, the first 10 were all betting companies because I had the word sport in the profile, just to reinforce the shock, it is just everywhere…
Yeah, I think that sometimes that football can sleep walk into stuff, and that is what I’m always sensitive too on the women’s game as well, what are we doing that we could do differently to avoid us being in a situation in 5/10 years’ time, when we look back and go oh, if only we thought differently we could have done things, because we don’t have to follow the rules.
We don’t have to follow the same rules that mens football has followed, a lot of people are disillusioned with mens football, and we have this amazing chance to do things differently.
You talked about Lewes, and in the last 10 years, so many campaigns they have been involved in, so where does that come from? The core of those people that have been shaping that?
Well, I think there is probably a few things, the directors are brilliant, they are visionary, they believe genuinely in the power of football for social good. I think a lot of people talk about it, but I think they genuinely see it and they try to live that as well.
But, also I think that the very town of Lewes has a huge role, it is a rebellious town, it is well known for its bonfires, I mean the population is 17,000, but it has 7 bonfire societies, and blows everything up in a rebellious action in November, and it is beautiful.
It is kind of known to be this slightly progressive, edgy, quirky town, that no one really understands why it is the way it is, and people are incredibly proud of the club, and vice versa the club is incredibly proud of the town and the town is proud of the club, and it has got a symbiotic nature and relationship and I think that is also why a club that is fan owned, works with Lewes because people are really proud to support something that they stand for.
We have about 1500 owners, across 26 countries.
I’m an owner!
Yes, fantastic!
Yeah, it is a bit like when I became an owner in 2017, I like the principles and values, I back you, and we have seen that now with other people around the world popping up and saying, yep, we back you too.
Talking of money, and semi pro, going professional, does that ownership stop you from having some rich magnet waltzing in with some funding to transform the club?
Yeah, and I think that is brilliant. You know, if there are some shady billionaires out there that want to give us money, you’re not welcome. Of, course I need more money, we have so much more ambition, so much potential and we know that we need money to take us to that next level, but we are only going to take good people’s money, and we are not going to compromise our values, because then we have not achieved anything. The hypocrisy would be terrible!
So, I think we are looking for partners, we are looking for people who want to be part of this, we already punch above our weight, we are not crazy, we know this, like Lewes who? People when they read out our draw in the FA cup don’t even know how to pronounce as and ‘lose FC’ is a terrible name for a football club! But, you know we are already in a league with Aston Villa, and Leicester City, and Crystal Palace, and Blackburn Rovers, and then there is Lewes.
So, we are already doing that, imagine, imagine, if we could get promoted into the WSL. You know, we played Arsenal a couple of weeks ago and the visibility around that in the FA Cup was great for a club like us, but we can’t help but think hey we want to be doing that every week, and we also know that it doesn’t cost that much to run womens football clubs in this country at the moment, for these sponsors is cheap, and we are also not blind to the fact that at any point any of those big Premiership clubs could turn on the tap and really invest in their womens team, in a way that we can’t just turn on a tap.
So, yeah, we are holding ourselves back, we won’t take any dirty or compromised money, and we won’t be able to turn on a magic tap, so we will just have to do it differently.
Do you feel this profile of the club, and all that you are doing has that brought more pressure this season to perform, because you have raised the profile and there is more of a spotlight on you?
Yeah, definitely, we have the opportunity to prove the concept of equality.
Like I say, we are already punching above out weight, but if we are really able to perform in the pitch, win the league, or have a great cup run, then we get to show people that when you invest equally into your women, amazing things can happen.
I think for me personally I feel a lot of pressure, like I really want this to work and I’m also aware that some people would like us to fail. That is great, that is fine that some people would like us to fail.
I was very aware of that when we went into the game against Arsenal a few weeks ago, because we had been very vocal in calling out the disparity in prize money for the FA Cup, and I’m also very aware Arsenal are a brilliant football team, and could beat us 8,9,10 nil.
So, I was going interviews before the game, and thinking myself we are putting ourselves out there, and I was telling myself be brave Maggie, don’t be compromised just because you might lose badly. I was so, so, proud of the team, and of our fans who were really vocal and on TV all you can hear is the Lewes fans and I was so proud of them, and I was really proud that we had done ourselves proud.
There is lots of pride in there isn’t there, it just yeah, they did such a great job and I was a little bit aware of the fact that would keep of some of the trolls for a little bit longer.
Your campaign for equal prize money across the FA Cup has generated the most incredible coverage, so can you tell us a little bit about why you feel that is necessary?
For me it is obvious, for others it isn’t. I think that people are happy with the idea that men should win more money than women, I’m not happy with that, but lots of people will come in with their arguments as to why that should remain the case.
I think though that they weren’t quite aware of just how big the gap was until we started talking about it. When we went into our fourth round FA game, if I remember correctly we won £2,000, but if we were male we would have won £180,000, like I you, I can win the league with £180,000, I can improve our facilities and our infrastructure, I can provide even better coaching to one hundred girls in our pathway if you give me £180,000 for a single game, but I got £2,000, okay fine, that goes towards our away travel for a game that is cancelled.
Then the next game against Arsenal, we could have won £3,000, but the men were set to win £360,000. It is not just the number, it is also the fact that the men side they keep doubling the prize money, but for us we are going up in smaller increments. So, I was like who makes the decision about not just the prize money, but also the incremental jumps.
Sorry, who does make that decision? It is the FA, but where does that sit?
I don’t actually know, that is on my lift of things to find out.
I’m talking to Kelly later, perhaps that is a question for Kelly!
You know, there’s loads of people that come back, and there will be an argument about well there is more mens teams in the FA cup, so I quickly did the numbers, and I was like okay that is fine the total prize put at the moment is 250,000 or 300,000 pounds for the womens for all of the teams, so just by doing the quick maths I realised that If that argument was to hold I think the prize pot should be 8 million, so I was like okay fine we can go up to 8 million if that is what you’d life.
Then you look at some of the other arguments, and they’ll talk about revenue or they will talk about well you would kill grassroots mens football if you took away the money, and actually 80% of the mens FA Cup money goes into the last few rounds, where the premiership teams are playing, so it isn’t actually the grassroots.
Then, someone said well yeah, but you will kill the FA Cup, you’ll kill the FA Cup for men, you can’t just halve their money, and then we pointed out that actually two years ago in 2018, the prize pot was exactly that, it was exactly half, and two years ago the decision was made to double the entire mens pot to more than £30 million, so the women only have £300,000, the men have £30 million.
We have to be really aware of this, we are not blind to the fact that womens football doesn’t generate, yet, as much money and revenue and broadcasting, but then there hasn’t been any investment. How can I generate bigger crowds, or how can I go on a marketing drive if I have just won £2,000 in my FA Cup, if I had £180,000, I tell you I’d, yeah?
We have this idea that mens football got to the size it is all by itself, and that is not the case. They have had huge amount of investment, public money, tax payers money, your money, my money, for decades in the use of public facilities, in the use of public grants and things.
Even Wembley stadium hosts so many more mens sports fixtures than womens, but it got £120 million of tax payers funds just a couple of years ago. So, our money is constantly being scud towards investing in the mens football, and we are just getting pennies and we have got so much potential.
What did you hope to achieve with the campaign this year, and having met you I don’t feel that you’re done yet so I guess how do you build upon this years’ awareness?
I think that what I would like to do is find out who else is on board, and wants to work with us on this. We got a lot of support from different clubs who were wanting to kind of figure out what they could do to help, I don’t really known what the answer is, but I think it is something that has to be addressed quite soon because the numbers can’t stay how they are.
I’m looking for the allies, looking for the people that want to be a part of this, you know the prize money is something that is quite good for a football club to get behind, there is loads and loads of inequalities in womens football and sport, that’s like representation of women in the media, or whatever it might be, but the one thing that football clubs can get behind is something like prize money because it is clear.
You can’t argue with the clarity of those number?
Well, people do, but yeah I think we just need to shift somehow. What I would like is if we agree that the current divide, which is less than 1% of what the men earn, if we agree that isn’t good, but if we also agree that we aren’t ready for equal prize money, which Lewes, well we would step out of that. But, when, when should the prize put be equalled.
I’d be willing to have those conversations, well okay it going to be 2040, so what do we do in order to get up there in 2040, but at the moment there is nothing, it is just that is just the way that it is.
I think that no one can think that the current status que is okay, trying to find the marker is trying to figure out how do we get to the equal prize money.
We have obviously seen the rise in athlete activists, and the likes of Megan Rapinoe in the states, are you a fan or her and all she has done for the game so far?
Yeah, I think she is wonderful. Wonderfully inspiring on the pitch, off the pitch. She as an individual she has taken such an intersectional lens as well, so you know she is a white women that took a knee in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, she calls out racism, homophobia, you know she is taking a stance on so many issues, she is so brave.
But, also I’m really impressed with the knowledge and the wisdom that the other players on the US national team display, I don’t like them, I wanted England to beat them in the world cup, but you have to admire there staunchness, and it takes bravery.
Would you like to see more of the England womens team, taking a stand, and being more vocal about inequality in sport?
Yeah, of course I would. You see some players, not necessarily in the England team that are starting to speak up, and be quite vocal.
I also don’t blame them if they don’t, because they are in a very difficult position, even for me I’m so far away from being a professional player, but I only became really active once I had kind of stopped playing competitively, because then you can look back and go, so those are all those things, that was systematic, because when you are in it, it is just things are popping up, and you are like oh that is strange, but you’re trying to get into the first team, and then you are trying to get selected for England, and then you are trying to keep your position.
You are in a really difficult position, so I don’t blame them at all, and I bet a whole bunch of them will be much more out spoken once they have retired which is totally natural.
And finally, with your years of experience, what advice would you give to young aspiring female leaders perhaps coming into football or into sport generally?
Something that I think is really important is for young women to know themselves, know what they stand for, know what they like, know what they don’t like, and be comfortable with their own decisions.
I feel like when you are a teenager or a young women, you are often being shepherded towards being the same, like liking the same things that your friends like, finding yourself in situations where you feel like you should be there to please someone or to please something. The quickest we can get rid of that and have people that are comfortable with what they like, they don’t like, who they are, the more that they will be able to identify their principles and values, and once you know what your principles and values are you just have a code to operate by. You see that with individuals, but you also see that with a club like Lewes.
So, for Lewes when that betting company came in, it was easy, it was like well here are our principles and values, no we don’t want the money. If you are not clear on what your principles, and values are, then you are going to spend a long time prevaricating over whether you take the money or not, so I think once you are quite clear with yourself, then it is just easier to take decisions.
The last thing is being brave, I think I have had this instinct which has always been to say yes to things that will take me out of my comfort zone, and I think that is crucial.
I have said this to some teenage girls as well, when an opportunity comes up and your instinct is to say no, say yes and then figure out later how to do this thing you have signed up for, because I think just push yourself.