The Game Changers
In this award-winning podcast Sue Anstiss talks to trailblazers in women sport. These are the individuals who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. Along with openly sharing their historic careers, what drives them and how they’ve dealt with tough challenges, each episode explores key issues for equality in sport and beyond.
We’re incredibly grateful to Sport England who support The Game Changers through a National Lottery award.
You can find out about all the guests at https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers Fearless Women in Sport
The Game Changers
Jackie Oatley: Changing career to follow your passion
This episode was previously released on April 14, 2020
Jacqui talks about her lifelong obsession with football, how she changed careers at 27 to re-train as a journalist and how lonely and isolated she felt after the hideous build up to her first appearance on BBC’s Match of The Day.
Being the first female commentator on Match of the Day is how Jacqui is best known to many. She went on to present the show in 2015, and in 2016 was awarded an MBE for her services to broadcasting and diversity. Jacqui presented the BBC’s flagship sports news show Sportsweek, hosted Euros and World Cups for BBC and ITV and now hosts football and darts for ITV. She recently became the first female host of Sky Sports Sunday Supplement show.
It’s no wonder that in 2015 Jacqui was named as the 8th most influential woman in sport by the Independent.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
Hello and welcome to the Game Changers podcast. I'm Sue Anstis, a founding trustee of the Women's Sport Trust and CEO of Promote, one of the UK's leading sports communications agencies. I'm thrilled to say that this series of the Game Changers is supported by Barclays and will focus on fearless women in football, reinforcing Barclays' huge commitment to the beautiful game. Last year, barclays announced the biggest ever sponsorship of women's sport in the UK, as the Barclays FA Women's Super League became Europe's first fully professional women's football league. A huge amount of Barclays investment also went into establishing the Girls Football School Partnerships with the aim of ensuring that all girls in England have equal access to football in schools. My guest today is passionate about ensuring all women have equal access to working in sports media.
Speaker 1:Sports presenter Jackie Oatley was awarded an MBE in 2016 for her services to broadcasting and diversity in sport. Jackie's best known by many as the first female commentator to appear on BBC's Match of the Day, which she went on to present in 2015. A former director of the Women in Football Network, jackie anchored the 2013 Euros and the Women's World Cup in 2015 for the BBC and then the Men's 2016 Euros and the 2018 World Cup for ITV Sport. She was presenter of BBC's flagship sports news show, sportsweek on BBC 5 Live and now hosts football and darts for ITV and was recently appointed as the first female host of Sky Sports' hugely popular show, sunday Supplement. It's no wonder that in 2015, jackie was named as the eighth most influential woman in sport by the Independent. With such an incredibly busy schedule, I was so pleased that Jackie made the time to meet with me. We met at her gorgeous home in Surrey and I began the interview by asking her where her love of football began.
Speaker 2:So I'm a little bit odd in many ways, but particularly in this regard, because it wasn't the traditional dad taking you to football and being mad on one club, or brother kicking balls around in the garden, and then you got into it that way. I was at an all-girls school for 10 years and in those days girls didn't really like football or nobody I knew did and so nobody at school ever talked about football. Mum and dad didn't, my brother no interest in football whatsoever, and I was always obsessed with sport right from the word go. My dad liked golf and snooker and I used to watch everything on tv, all sorts of sports, um, wimbledon, wall-to-wall coverage and olympics. I'd watch everything. So that was an innate passion.
Speaker 2:But I had no introduction to football at all until I was lying on the sofa one day, I think maybe I was ill and didn't want to get up and change the tv channel and just watch this game, and that was it. I can't even tell you what game it was. There weren't many games on tv back then, it was one a week. I think some switch flicked in my head and I just thought this is the sport for me. I can still remember. I could picture the scene in my lounge when I just thought this is the sport for me and it was just absolutely right for me and that was it.
Speaker 2:I suddenly overnight became the biggest weirdo and nobody understood why or where it had come from. And my good friends at school assumed it was because I was trying to get in with the boys Not that we had any at our school, you understand, but they thought that must be it. But it wasn't, and I just went and ripped all my Bross posters down off my bedroom wall and under my dressing table glass and replaced them with nobody in particular at first. I just cut any pictures out from match shoot and 90 minutes magazine and just filled my bedroom with football. And to this day I don't really understand it. It just happened?
Speaker 1:how old were you then at that point? You think, good question.
Speaker 2:I'm still not entirely sure. I think it was probably about 13, 14 and from that day onwards I would run to the front door when the dog would bark, when the express and star newspaper would arrive, and previously I'd open to page three to the tv guide and circle what I wanted to watch that night. And one day I just went straight to the back page and I've got a local football team.
Speaker 1:I'll start supporting them and that was it really was, when your friends were looking at heat magazine or smash hits or whatever it was. Then, my guy, you were looking at football magazines and yeah, that was it.
Speaker 2:They were all reading girly magazines. I used to have the jackie annual going back a bit um, and that was it. I used to. I think was it shoot or match. One of them was out on a tuesday and a wednesday and I knew the, the delivery date, the publication date and I'd walk sort of 15 minutes into the Stars new shops in Codsall and would buy those magazines on whatever date they came out, and I wouldn't just flick through them like you might do a girly magazine. I would read every single word and absorb it.
Speaker 2:And to the back of match and shoot, they would have all the starting 11s and substitutes and who'd come on and who'd gone off of every team throughout the league. And I used to scour I don't know why, it sounds really odd I used to scour all down the lower leagues and absorb what was happening in. It was the third and fourth division at that time, league one and two now, and I would pick out play if there was a feature on them. I was thinking, oh god, maybe wolf should sign them one day and, you know, maybe I should write to the club and tell them or something. Mark Rankin of Doncaster looks good. And then they signed him. I didn't write to the club, it was a coincidence.
Speaker 1:Do you remember going to your first live match, your first game? How did that feel? Did that live up to the expectations you'd had in terms of all? You'd read and studied about it.
Speaker 2:Well it's funny because I went to the old Molyneux stadium, which only had two sides open, and one of the stands that was open was miles away from the pitch because the club had run out of money before they could finish the stadium redevelopment and two stands were condemned. So it was a weird non-atmosphere. But I used to stand on the south bank and got a season ticket for 75 pounds and I used to go up where all the action was and there weren't really many girls or women around there and I used to get asked well, how come you're not down the front with the girls? And I just couldn't think of anything worse than being away from the atmosphere. And that was what it was about. It was.
Speaker 2:I was just absorbed by the passion, the atmosphere, the tactics or lack of them, everything to do with the game, the sights, sights, the smells, the sounds, the travelling away from home. When you feel part of a gang, you feel part of a tribe, because football is so tribal and I was just completely absorbed by it and utterly obsessed and I still am to this day. And did you play football as well as?
Speaker 2:a girl, we couldn't play at school. I went to an all-girls school. We weren't allowed to play. When I asked, went to a virtually all-boys school for sixth form and we weren't allowed to play there either. So I set up a lower six against upper six girls football team. The boys paid a pound to a charity to watch us and to laugh at us because none of us had ever kicked a ball before. And no, I just bought myself a ball and just taught myself how to do keepy-uppies endlessly for hours in the garden and would bash the ball against the garage door and annoy the rest of my family. So I taught myself that.
Speaker 2:But there were no clubs, there were no teams and nobody I knew was remotely interested. So it was only when I went to university at the age of 17, I went to Leeds Uni and the very first day of Freshers' Week I made a beeline for the women's football table and said I've never played in my life. Can I join? And yeah, sure, and I had a great time. It was socially. It was absolutely phenomenal, travelling all over the country, all over Yorkshire, and got on so well with the girls, and just that's what I'd love to have done from the age of five, not 17. But and then I carried on playing down to London, joined a local team in the Greater London League, unfortunately had a very, very serious injury dislocating my kneecap and ruptured all the ligaments, lost all the cartilage under the kneecap and was told it was such a bad injury that I could never kick a ball again. Really, and um, so I haven't. And that's when.
Speaker 1:That's when I ended up changing career as a result of that, You're not a straight route into media and journalism. Was that the piece that caused you to change your career direction? Your injury?
Speaker 2:I'd often thought about it. It was growing up. There was no, no inspiration in terms of working in football media or sports media yes, the odd female presenter and Helen Rollison of course but it never felt like something I could aspire to do personally, whether that was a confidence issue or what. I just didn't see openings. I didn't see women going into journalism. I never really thought about a career in it. So what was the thing that made you shift?
Speaker 2:The short version is that I did a German degree, travelled around the world for a year after that, came back at the age of 22 and thought, oh, I thought I'd know what I wanted to do by now and I didn't. And so I did some temping in the black country, in Dudley, and I just hadn't thought until then that I could make a career of sports journalism. Because, despite having this obsession growing up and at school, where they all thought I was a little bit odd, probably, I'm guessing nobody suggested have you thought about broadcasting or writing, because in those days you didn't really see female sports writers. So it was only after a few years in another job that I started to get itchy feet and I knew that wasn't for me, that job, the career just wasn't fulfilling. So really I thought, god, I'd love to start again.
Speaker 2:How do I do it? I'm just, and I read biographies of people who had got into this business and a lot of them had journalism qualifications or work experience or degrees in that field and I didn't have any of that. But I bought a book about how to become a journalist and it started off by saying it's very handy if you have a language degree and I thought, ah, okay, maybe I could, maybe I can do this. And then I decided to do take a couple of days off work and do a couple of days work experience at haters sports news agency. I went to a couple of press conferences and I was like, oh my goodness, this is for me.
Speaker 2:And I put my hand up and and asked Glenn Hoddle a question, and and the answer made it into the daily mail the next day and I thought, oh, this is a buzz, I'd like to ask football people questions. This is great. And so I gave up my job one day because I thought, well, I can't get the work experience I need while being in another job, and then of course I wouldn't have an income living in London. So I handed the notice on my flat and I rang around a few friends and said look, this is the decision I've decided to make. I really want to make a go of changing career, but I need to find a way in somehow can I come and stay on your floor for a week or stay on your sofa bed? And so I just took a duvet and a carrier bag with pillow and a little backpack around London to whoever was kind enough to let me stay on their floor, because everyone was paying rent at that time, you see, and um, and I just did as much work experience unpaid as I could, and I by that point I had done six months of hospital radio at the end of my working day and I would do an evening of print journalism course and a radio production course.
Speaker 2:So I was doing all this work experience as much as I could and finding out as much as I could about the industry in my spare time. But eventually I had to give up everything to be able to throw everything at it. And so that's what I did. And I and I thought, well, where do I go from here? I'm doing all this unpaid work experience, but I need to. I need to get a job, and you can't really just get a job without any kind of qualification, unless you're extremely lucky. So I did that for a year in Sheffield, moved up there lock stock was a postgrad in in journalism or sports journalism in broadcast journalism, so that was new.
Speaker 2:So it's half tv, half radio. But I had zero interest in tv and um, while I was there I wrote to all the local bbc stations in the area and bbc leads tv invited me in for two days uh, work experience. And while I was there went on the leads united financial story and helped the guy who was doing it because he wasn't into football and they had a lot of financial issues at the time and collared the sports editor in the newsroom and he said well, would you be interested in coming to do a voice test because we don't have anyone to do the non-league. And I was like, yeah, too, right, got a long story short. I did the non-league football reporting 21 pounds a week and I did not give a monkeys about money. I'd saved not that I had loads, but I'd saved up all my bonuses from my previous job and yeah. So I just turned the West Yorkshire non-league football scene into my first patch and I absolutely adored it. I was still studying at the time and I was so grateful for the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Every night and evening and non-working day was dedicated towards building contacts and getting stories and I used to write non-league football stories for the guy who was doing radio leads in the morning, because I thought you were adding value to the station by giving them non-league news, I mean, and they weren't doing that before. So one thing led to another and I was asked if I wanted to do shifts on BBC London after I'd gone down there one day and um and spoken to the sports editor. And one thing led to another, I ended up moving back down south and um, five Live invited me in. They got me to do the weekend breakfast sport and things carried on from then and I'd started doing commentary for bbc leads, which I was extremely grateful for, and carried that on at five live and euro women's.
Speaker 1:Euro 2005 was my first break on that front with them and were there many women working within that bbc, the sports team, at the time when you arrived? Then?
Speaker 2:so when I started at bbc leeds, there was tanya arnold, who has been around for a very long time, very, very experienced, so she was more on the tv site. She did a lot of the leeds united rugby league stories cricket. My goodness, it's an amazing patch, it really is, and it was a great start for me. And then when I moved down to BBC London, pete Stevens, the sports editor, was brilliant at giving women an opportunity. He still is to this day. I often phone him up or see him and suggest somebody to him or ask him if he's got anybody for somebody else, because he's just great at giving people opportunities.
Speaker 2:And but of course it was extremely male dominated and certainly local radio, and I think it still is. Really I'm not too sure why, but I don't see too many women in the local radio press box or even local newspapers. So nationally broadcast wise, yes, there are a lot more women now on TV and on the radio, which is absolutely brilliant. But I do worry a little bit about the supply line, because really that's where you need to get your experience, where there's less pressure in a regional print media and broadcast environment and you can learn from people and kick on.
Speaker 1:And when you started out at BBC, did people talk about the fact that there weren't enough women? Was that something that was people making a conscious effort to change that at the time?
Speaker 2:not. Initially I was conscious that in local radio there really weren't many women certainly not doing commentary. There was one at the time who's no longer doing it, unfortunately, but in those days you would get into local radio. You do sports bulletins for local station. I was lucky on that patch because you would be sitting in a box all day doing radio Leeds, york, sheffield and Humberside sports bulletins and rewriting quickly and on air. It's quick turnaround. So I learned very quickly, um, but you tend to do that. And then you do non-league or local football reporting.
Speaker 2:There tended to be a bit of a glass ceiling that women didn't tend to do commentary in those days. But I said to my sports editor at the time, derm Tanner, that I was keen to do it and ask for advice. And one day a game was called off that Radio Leeds were going to do and they knew that I was keen to do commentary. So the reporting match I was going to do Wakefield and Emily against Worksop Town and suddenly became the commentary game and I was like, oh my goodness, I got up at three o'clock in the morning to do the breakfast show that day and uh, and had to try and do some prep for the commentary and it was quite funny because in those days we didn't really have much information on the internet, especially non-league football. There really wasn't much. But uh, I did my best. It must have been absolutely terrible, honestly, the player identification was so hard. But they all six foot was short, dark hair, miles away. You can even see the numbers. You're in the corner low down in the commentary box.
Speaker 2:But hey, I got through it and, um, yeah, so I thought, even though there weren't many women around at that time, personally I didn't see it as a barrier because I think maybe having a bit of life experience helped me with that. I'd been a manager in a previous industry in intellectual property, I'd managed staff. So I had that bit of maturity and a bit of self-confidence as a human really, and I was quite good with people and my, my football knowledge I was very confident with because I was that weirdo obsessive type. So I didn't worry about that and, yeah, I just thought you know what? I wasn't aiming high.
Speaker 2:I was really aiming to work for Five Live one day. That was the only ambition and I did have it in my head that I'd like to try and do it before I was 30. Just be on air once on five live before I was 30 and I managed it at the age of 29 I think, and that was really it, because I used to listen to five live all day, all evening, in the car at home in my flat and their football coverage I just thought was outstanding and I idolized the people who were on there and they were my kind of pop stars really in those days, because they were the people I really looked up to. So to work for them was an absolute privilege.
Speaker 1:And did you have any issues in terms of being a woman in press boxes, people not being happy to answer your questions, interviews and players or managers? Was that ever an issue for you, or do you think your vast knowledge kind of put you in a stronger position than some?
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny because, going back to the non-league days, my very first reporting match was Bradford Park Avenue against Ashton United in the Unibon Premier League and I think it was the most terrifying experience of my life, because they played at the Horsefall Stadium, which had one of those awful running tracks around the outside and they had one of those horrible enclosed press boxes which, if you're doing print journalism, maybe that's okay because you're a bit warmer, but for broadcast it was shocking because I just remember these guys I don't think anybody was under the age of 60 there and I think they've been going a very long time and they looked at this blonde thing with a clipboard and a massive mobile phone, thinking what is she doing and what would she know, and of course, it all felt completely silent when they threw to me and I was so self-conscious.
Speaker 2:It was a horrible feeling. And I remember interviewing players at Frickley Athletic and you know, standing by the the dressing rooms and asking them for team news, and they looked at me like I was a little bit mad, like why do you care about the team news and why do you care about formations? Because I just think they didn't really have. Maybe journalists didn't take too much notice, but certainly not female ones, um, but I was really bang into it. I wanted to know the formation and how they were going to play and yeah, and I built my patch and worked my way up and and I didn't have. I wasn't self-conscious in that regard because I felt I knew what I was talking about. I didn't have issues oh gosh, someone's going to find me out that really wasn't a problem just because I knew how hard I worked and and how much research I did. So that was always fine. But, yeah, I've only had a a few instances with managers where I thought you think I've no idea what I'm talking about, don't you, because I'm a lass not too many really in all these years.
Speaker 2:But there there was one manager I remember who, um, when I interviewed him after a Premier League game actually. But I could tell he was a bit of a dinosaur even though he wasn't that old, but I could just tell. And he was looking through me and I was asking perfectly fair questions and I just knew he thought what's the point? And then I remember well, I'm just going to, I'm just going to remark on a couple of his tactical changes, and blah, blah, blah, and he looked at me suddenly, looked at me in the eye, and he went you know, you football, don't you?
Speaker 2:And I just thought, oh dear, oh dear, this is pathetic. Really it was quite pathetic, but that was obviously his preconception and I guess we all grow up with preconceptions. And you know, I've certainly walked into Dixon's and Maplin's before and realised that I've subconsciously gone for the male shop steward rather than the lady because I was asking a technical question. I remember having a word with myself afterwards thinking what are doing? You've, you've had this for years in football. But then when you think about it, it's kind of natural to a lot of people to do that and of course we still have that a little bit today in terms of what would she know?
Speaker 1:but I think people do realize that there are plenty of us now who have grown up, you know, madly passionate about our sport and and having lived it and breathed it, and I think it's a lot more accepted now, yeah, and I think you know along, the likes of Gabby Logan and Sue Barker and Ellie Oldroyd I hear lots of talk about, and Claire Boring too, you'll recognize almost as breaking that glass ceiling for women's sports presenters. So do you feel the opportunities for women now coming in are very different from where it was 15 years ago?
Speaker 2:so women coming into sports presenting very much so, absolutely, and it's thanks to all those wonderful women who you mentioned then, who have broken down those barriers. Um, they probably wouldn't say they have but or meant to, but they've just got on with doing their job and doing it fantastically well, which naturally then means that when the next person comes in there's not so much of a mistrust which certainly I experienced with commentary was the biggest barrier was the mistrust. What on earth would she know? I bet she doesn't know about our team, but she couldn't have that passion. I've actually heard these things, which are hilarious, but, um, yeah, I think it's so different now, and it's so different to the point that people are actively looking for good women to recruit. That's the difference, because there is this drive now for diversity, and a lot of people think of the the d word as being a pejorative term, but actually I think of it as being more representative of the audience, and I remember a friend of mine who's not a sport fan at all has said that one of the things she's noticed with sort of seeing me presenting is she thinks that having a female presenter actually doesn't exclude her from the show and from the subject matter, which I hadn't really thought of before she felt that, oh, actually the show is for me. If she's talking about it, then maybe, maybe it's not just an old boys club that she's previously seen sport as being.
Speaker 2:I think all white male panels these days are not really the done thing, and on occasions it's fine if it's a very small panel about a certain subject. But bosses now are realizing it's not good enough. You don't just get any old woman, any old black person, any old asian person, no way. That's when you've got problems. If you can't be bothered to find the best people, then you've got problems because then it breeds resentment amongst their peers and amongst the audience and you really does nobody any favors.
Speaker 2:If you do diversity badly. You have to say, okay, we're going to be diverse for the right reasons, because you want to represent our audience and we, we must find the best people. And if they're not immediately in front of us, well, do some research, pick up the phone. Who have you met? Who's really really good at their job but maybe hasn't appeared on our radar, maybe they haven't pushed themselves forward yet and maybe we need to go and get them and encourage them, because we have to change the culture whereby the best talent and the best diverse talent comes to the fore because the culture is there whereby they are welcomed absolutely.
Speaker 1:You clearly made news 2007 when you were the first woman to commentate on match. The day seems like a long time ago now, doesn't it? Um, can you give us a little bit of that backstory? I guess it didn't just kind of happen, or maybe it did just happen, but how did that come about?
Speaker 2:well, it came about because I was commentating regularly in Premier League football for five live and people who did that tended to be invited to do a game for match of the day, and that's precisely what happened. So when I was asked to do it, yes, I was thinking, fantastic, but for goodness sake, it was one game and it was because I was regularly commentating on five live and I didn't think too much beyond that. There was part of me that had sort of a little bit in the back of my mind thinking will this get noticed? Will it become, become a story? And I just thought I really hope not, because I'd done everything previously to discourage any kind of attention. For that reason, I was just a journalist and I wanted to tell the story. I did not want to become part of the story and so I just wanted to seamlessly slot in. So therefore I didn't tell anyone and I just hoped it wouldn't find its way into the national media there was no twitter in those days, but unfortunately that's very naive. And of course it made its way into the daily mail on the Tuesday before the Saturday, and that's where it all started and unfortunately there was this hideous build-up in which I was front page news. Back page news. From Motti to Totti was the headline in one paper. Is football ready for Jackie Oatley was the front page of the Guardian, a massive photograph on the front page of the Telegraph. It was enormous and I just felt this overwhelming wave of pressure and I felt extremely lonely and isolated at that time because I was single, I was living in a flat on my own, I was just prepping and working the whole time. So I still I still felt I was fairly new in terms of commentary. Yes, I've been doing it a few years, but certainly this was new and I felt very much the focus.
Speaker 2:It wasn't so much on me with radio because again, we didn't have Twitter, so I didn't have any social media abuse or anything particularly. No one really noticed, nobody really seemed to care. I felt I was doing an okay job after initial major self-conscious nerves and stuff to start with, and I did a couple of horrendous commentaries. Purely because of that I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders and then came through that. But TV again was just another matter.
Speaker 2:So by the time the Saturday came, after I'd had every phone in, had been debating whether I should be allowed to do it. My radio alarm that I woke up to on the Wednesday or Thursday morning at seven o'clock had Rachel Burden a good friend of mine, actually, um, five live, um asking the question should a female be allowed to commentate on match of the day? It wasn't her question, of course, it was the subject, and I just remember feeling in the eye of the storm, thinking oh my goodness, what is going on, and I had all these phone calls of support from other commentators saying I can't believe this, this is ridiculous. I had loads of texts and emails from colleagues I've met in local radio, national media over the years asking for interviews, and I stupidly wrote extensive emails and texts back explaining politely why I was going to decline, because I did not want to be the story.
Speaker 2:I did not want to add fuel to the fire, I just wanted the attention to go away. I didn't want to be a celebrity. On the contrary, I really, really did not want any profile whatsoever, which is quite against the way a lot of people are now. But I just didn't want that. I just wanted to be as good a football commentator as I could and I worked so, so hard at it. I spent every spare minute doing prep, which was actually very bad idea. I should have been better at switching off. I'm still terrible at switching off and prep every, every spare minute. Now I just juggle young children as well, which is, you know, another ingredient to the mix.
Speaker 2:But it came, it went, I survived. There weren't too many articles saying how terrible I was, which was quite nice. But there was, unfortunately, a whole back page on the Monday morning on the mail, which was it was sad because it was entirely untrue. Um, I don't know where they'd got the information from that I'd had to go back to TV centre and write a script and redub the entire eight and a half minutes. It simply wasn't true. I'd done my commentary. I got down off the gantry and went and interviewed the two managers and then wandered back to my car thinking, okay, this is weird. I'm used to my commentary going out live, but now I've got a few hours for this awful, awful thing to happen, which was actually expecting a boatload of abuse and what have you. And it was. It was really weird. So to see that on a monday morning was just. It was so disheartening because I had no comeback what do you do in that situation?
Speaker 1:there isn't anything you can really beyond calling them up for it.
Speaker 2:There's no more. You can do with hindsight and this is gosh, gosh. Nearly 13 years ago I was. I was so naive then, I didn't know how it worked. I had nobody. I felt like I had nobody who had my back, and that's not criticism of anybody, it's just how I felt. I just felt there should have been an apology. I wish I'd phoned them up myself. I wish I got the journalist phone number and said why did you write that? Who told you that it's simply not true? And yeah, but as it was. I just got my head down. I did what I always did and just worked hard, worked even harder and did the very best job I could, and. But it was a very different era. Then there was no social media and, I think, double-edged sword. Yes, I would have got a boatload of abuse. It would have been horrible. But equally, had I been on Twitter at that time, then people would have known that I was completely immersed in football, went to matches every week.
Speaker 1:They might have known my background, but I had no, no online footprint then, because and I guess, moving on to now, when you do have an online footprint in Twitter and obviously fantastic that you recently appointed as the new host of the Sky Sports Sunday Supplement. So huge congratulations again, more groundbreaking appointments and amongst, I guess, all that huge praise and the positive messages from fans and media colleagues, there are also once again, but now on Twitter some really sexist comments, and my reaction always is it's generally a mix of shock that these attitudes exist and then amusement almost at the stupidity of some of them. They've usually got nine or ten followers. Are you still surprised to see those comments at that time?
Speaker 2:Amused. I think I've just got to show you one that I found yesterday that I saved just to show my husband at breakfast because it made me laugh quite a lot. I used to religiously watch this program every week until it turned into woman's hour, which is very funny, because we didn't even talk about women's football and there were no women on the panel, there was literally just me presenting it, so that that actually made me laugh. And now, with all this experience and it's almost like a comfort blanket having that experience, because it's not so much easier but it just feels so much more natural to be able to do your job and I do feel much more accepted now I don't feel like I'm fighting fires at all. I really don't.
Speaker 2:And when I get comments purely based on my gender, honestly I can tell you truthfully it is water off a duck's back, because what are you supposed to do with that? What does it even mean? If somebody says I thought the way you asked that question was terrible, then I might be a bit oh, hang on a minute, I might watch that back and oh, actually he's got a point and I'll learn from it. I genuinely do take any of those kind of things on board. If it was something, if it was something critical of my style or something I'd said.
Speaker 2:But I haven't actually had those comments, it's purely been gender-based. But I have had a couple which have actually made me smile, which have been tweets of apologies yeah, a couple of those and and I've actually been really grateful to those, because it takes guts to say do you know what? I was one of those people that slagged you off token appointment and actually I was wrong, and so I've tweeted them back saying thank you. I really appreciate the message. I think it just shows that perhaps we're making progress, in the sense that, yes, it's frustrating you got that message in the first place but actually maybe we're moving forwards, that people are watching us and appreciating us for the job we're doing rather than the gender that we are and do you think it's worse in football and football commentary than cricket and rugby and other where you have other women commenting on males playing sport?
Speaker 2:I think it has been. I'm really good friends with alison mitchell and our careers have gone hand in hand really, and she is outstanding in what she does. And she says she's never had any of this and you might think that cricket's male dominated, but respectfully male dominated dare I suggest that possibly some of the cricketing audience is a little bit more grown up on occasion than some of the football audience. She hasn't had any of that. She really hasn't, and I'm so happy for her that she hasn't.
Speaker 1:And maybe maybe it's just that she's really good at what she does, maggie alfonso. Maggie says the same thing and she doesn't mind being people calling her out because she just made the wrong comment or they disagree with her but about being one. But she hasn't had much of that. I think people were surprised to see a woman commentating on the men's world cup. But it isn't. It's not in the way that the football, the vitriol that seems to follow football commentary.
Speaker 2:I think Maggie's a bit different because she won the world cup as a rugby player and one of the comments when I started doing match of the day was well, show us your medals, you know what have you won. And of course those sort of comments make you laugh because, well, what's john watson one? What's any of the other commentators? When did they play? Or you know how many medals have they got? So those kind of things. Honestly, I couldn't give a stuff about things like that. But I think it just has been a matter of time. Going back to the comment about going into curries or maplins or whatever, that subconscious bias that a lot of people have, I think it takes a few years for us to really yeah, to really tread new ground.
Speaker 1:Once that ground's been trodden, then other people follow and it's not such a big deal I'm going to move on to dance because obviously another passion of yours, big part of your work on tv, why darts? Would be my first question.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a very simple one, because I was rung up one day, um by somebody senior ITV, who, completely out of the blue, and offered me a contract. Now, I'd worked with him before, so I knew him, but no, I had absolutely no idea it was coming. And the contract involved a certain number of days on football, a certain number of days on darts, and I'd never worked on darts. It's on in our house. We would watch the premier league. Um, my husband and I watch all sorts of sports anyway, so you know.
Speaker 2:So I knew what the players were and what have you, but I didn't ever think I would be working on darts.
Speaker 2:It just wasn't something I thought would happen. So when I was asked to do it, yeah, jumped at it, absolutely jumped at it, but it was a steep learning curve because it's a very, very different sport to others I've covered. But I think the principles are the same and that my role as a presenter not a commentator, by the way as a presenter is to ask questions of those who have played the sport, partly from a base of knowledge, but partly on behalf of the audience at home, who may be avid darts fans and some of them may be interested darts spectators who want to know more. So I grabbed it with both hands and did as much research as I could and and really got an idea of that world, which you can't know about until you start working in it, because it's a very different world. I have to say I absolutely adore it. I just love it. The ITV team, we are all so into it and we just love, love working on it.
Speaker 1:It's an absolute privilege and obviously Fallon Sherratt's changed the, which brought me to dance this year anyway, but do you think that will have a huge impact moving forward in terms of women coming into the sport and attracting a new audience?
Speaker 2:well, this has been an absolute revelation, because there aren't too many sporting firsts left, are there? There really aren't too many. So when you have something like Fallon achieved at the world darts championship which is open to women, by the way, it's not a closed shop. It never has been. That's not the case. It's just that they have their own BDO Women's Darts Championship and now they have set up two qualifying events specifically for women, so it does encourage them.
Speaker 2:There will be two places, but it's just a case of a woman breaking that barrier, of winning a match at a PDC World Championship and that was a first. And then for her to follow it up by winning again against Mensul Sulovic, who is one of the best players in the world and, ok, she had a lot of people in on her side and people booing the opponent, and that's another debate, but she was so cool and so calm and, with darts being such a meritocracy, it's not like football where you can't have men playing against women. Yeah, you can absolutely have women playing against men in darts and there is that psychological barrier for the men that they whatever people say they really don't want to be on that big stage being booed and being beaten by a woman, even though ted evans was incredibly magnanimous and one of the new breed you know, young lad is a bit different for him, um, but it was phenomenal and the impact. The pdc were astonished, you know professional dance corporation and the fact that she was on good morning britain within a few hours she was on our bbc breakfast but all over the world she was doing every interview that she could while the attention was on her and on darts and it's resulted in her being invited to all the world series events.
Speaker 2:And there are a few issues. Maybe some players male players might be hang on, I've been on the circuit for years. I don't get, but it is the fact that they are trying to grow the game into different territories. And those two victories, and that first one almost overnight, changed darts forever.
Speaker 1:Still exciting now, isn't it?
Speaker 2:And she'll be in the UK Open in a few days' time, and so too will Lisa Ashton, who won a tour card as a professional for the next couple of years, which is fantastic. So it was not just Fallon it was Fallon that grabbed the headlines but the likes of Lisa Mikuru Suzuki, who's the women's back-to-back champion. They are breaking new ground.
Speaker 1:Exciting stuff and I'm going to move on now. So 2016,. You were awarded an MBE for services to broadcasting and diversity in sport, and I loved your quote at the time that you said I accepted it on behalf of, of every little girl who's been told she shouldn't play football and every woman who's been told to stay out of the press box. So it seems that having an impact on women in the future is something that's very important to you. Do you think that's always been the case, or is that something that's evolved over time?
Speaker 2:well, it's really interesting because when I came into sports broadcasting, and particularly on the football side of things, it was for the same reason that any lads would aspire to go into that industry because you're madly passionate about your sport and you'll have to work in that world. So initially I didn't have that. Oh, I'm going to be a woman in a man's world, because it was my world. I didn't feel like I was entering their world, I was just me.
Speaker 2:But of course it became abundantly clear that there weren't many, if any, other, women in the press box, and so I found myself entering this world whereby I was being asked about being the only woman to do this, or the first woman to do that.
Speaker 2:And we don't have women around here. And it was or can I have a? Can I have another lump of sugar in that, please love you know? Um, so it became clear, but again I feel that that life experience I had of having traveled around the world, of having lived in Germany when I was 19 years of age for a year, which very, very difficult actually having had that life experience of being a manager and having been a girl in my sixth form, where there were very few girls there but the only one who's mad, mad, mad man into football. I'd kind of built up all those experiences and was able to cope with it and so, going through that existence of being in my early days in sports journalism and sort of working my way up the ladder, I realized how important it was to try to mentor other women whenever I got chance or girls or be available or do interviews. And certainly before I had kids I was spending any day off. I had meeting up with students and spending half a day with them.
Speaker 1:It's almost like a full-time role, isn't it? If you just give yourself over to it, the mentors can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I spent a lot of time in Cafe Nero in Ealing where I was living the time meeting students on a weekly basis and giving them half a day to talk to them. And now, unfortunately, I get all these emails. Oh, I slightly panic because I flag them up and think I must reply. I must reply, it's so important I reply. But finding a spare minute to even file invoices or anything like that is so, so difficult, especially with children. Now it's really really, really hard. But I do feel that the mentoring side of things is really important because I didn't really have that.
Speaker 2:I met Eleanor Oldroyd fairly early on and she was just wonderful. Everyone knows what Ellie Oldroyd's like. She's just a fantastic character and having met with her and she just done an interview and she gave me some time to talk through how she does match reporting and that kind of thing and I was so, so grateful to her for her advice and her attitude and I just thought I need to be that person for anybody that wants advice about getting into this business and not just getting in and cracking on from a professional point point of view, because obviously it's not just women, it's boys as well and lads. But I find the other side of things to be a responsibility that I have taken on and I don't I don't mean to sound condescending when I say that, but I do feel like a big sister kind of figure to some of these women and I get frustrated when I see some of them struggling.
Speaker 2:Or I had an incident in a press box just last weekend where I was downstairs but, um, the young female broadcaster messaged me saying this dinosaur guy's just been so nasty. He's like why are you being here? What are you doing? Yeah, and it's so unusual in this day and age, and I was really cross. But he hadn't done it in front of me and and had he done it in front? I've experienced that with him for many years, by the way, and he's still going. And it makes me really cross because there's no reason to behave like that. She'd done nothing wrong, she wasn't in his seat, she wasn't stealing his ISDM point. She'd done nothing wrong and she just didn't know who he was and he was hugely offended and it was pathetic really.
Speaker 2:So, um, I think things like that where somebody's upset that they've been made to feel very, very small purely because of their gender, and then I think it is important to to be on the end of the phone or you know, if you see somebody breaking through or they've made the headlines or something's happened or a manager's been vile to them, and then I do pick up the phone on a Monday morning and just see if they want to chat about it. Because all these things I've experienced myself. I've been shouted out by managers and had a few ridiculous comments and put downs and if you stretch it out over 18 years, it's not many per season at all, but it feels horrible at the time. And of course, social media now is another element of it too, whereby tweets that people receive can make them feel pretty rubbish. So I think and having been through all those kind of things and and grown those layers of skin to be able to deflect that kind of unwanted attention, I do think it's important to then share that experience and explain to them.
Speaker 2:It's not you, it's him. Yeah, as I did in the press box on saturday when I saw that journalist again, I said just remember, he does that to every female. It's not you, it's him.
Speaker 1:And in time it won't feel quite as bad and finally, just to wrap up, are you this great lead into that in terms of women in football and the, and what that's become and done? Do you feel that help is helping women coming through in terms of the sector as a whole?
Speaker 2:what women in football have done in this country, I think, is just phenomenal. It really is started by anna castle and shelly alexander, who simply wanted to make a positive difference, and they got a few of us on board early on, um, in that upstairs room in a pub in 2007, just after my first match of the day, and no staff, there's no expenses, there's no nothing. We just meet up and initially the meetups were quite often women offloading about the negative experiences. Yeah, they weren't meant to be a moan up at all. They certainly were never anti-men, as I think occasionally the outside perception might have been. It was just difficult really being a woman in football when often you'd have you'd be the only woman in the press box or the only woman in the marketing department or the only woman in the dressing room or on the bench, and it wasn't all negative by any stretch, but some people did have very difficult experiences and it was a case of getting together and sharing those experiences, because a problem shared is a problem halved. But beyond that, it then developed into something whereby we would seek out leaders in various industries and get them to appreciate the issues and make a practical difference by encouraging them to understand some of the problems, why it's important to have a diverse workforce, certainly from a gender diversity point of view.
Speaker 2:There are studies which prove it's better for your business to have diversity in it, I think, and what those women have achieved the likes of Ebru Koksal, who comes over from Turkey and puts on these women in leadership courses for people working in football she does it for free, by the way. You know, she used to be chief executive of galatasaray. She's vast experience and those practical differences that I keep referring to make a vast difference in the industry. And, and I think a lot of it with women is about confidence, because if you feel like you are mistrusted by your colleagues because what would she know? Well, she's a woman. My wife, my daughters don't know anything about football. I bet she doesn't either. That kind of mistrust can be quite grating and quite tiring and quite difficult to prove yourself when really you just want to be judged on your own merits, not favorably, just purely on your own merits.
Speaker 2:So, um, I think what women in football have done to to make that difference and to change the landscape of football in this country and just remind people that just because women's football was banned for 50 years in this country doesn't mean that those women who never got to play can't possibly know anything about football, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be given opportunities.
Speaker 2:It's a shame that ban happened, because I think that really did set us back. That's the only reason really, I think, why we didn't have a generation of footballers that we see now with Phil Neville's team, with perfectly capable, talented players. They just weren't able to thrive in the same way that I could never kick a ball in a local team because there wasn't such a creature. So I think now we've made huge strides. The what if? Campaign was just phenomenal and the backing from the football industry of the likes of Miles Jacobson at Football Manager and people who are making these pledges to do very, very different tasks which make a difference, and it is phenomenal, and I think being a woman in football now is way less of a big deal, and that is just the way it should be.
Speaker 1:You can absolutely feel Jackie's passion for football and sport, and I'm sure that her story will be a massive inspiration to anyone considering a career in sports media.
Speaker 1:I'd love to know what you think about the Game Changers, so please do leave a review or give us a rating. Aside from making me very happy, your clicking the five-star rating will also take these stories to new audiences and helps the podcast to move higher up the iTunes ranking. If you want to get in touch, you can find me across social media, at Sue Anstis, or look out for the Game Changers on Twitter, facebook and Instagram. You can press the subscribe button so you don't miss out on future episodes and find out more about all my guests at promoteprcom slash gamechangers. Finally, a huge thanks to the lovely team at Barclays for supporting these podcasts, and also to my executive producer, sam Walker, at what Goes On Media. Next week, I'll be talking to Dame Sue campbell, former chair at uk sport and one of the most respected women in sport. Sue is now director of women's football at the fa if you ask me, why did I do it?
Speaker 3:yes, of course I love football. I've loved it since I was a child. But that wasn't the reason I did it. I did it because the FA is the most powerful brand in sport. You know you might not like that, but it is. It speaks to millions of people in millions of homes and I thought I wonder if this is my last chance to really get girls' and women's sport understood, valued and used as a driver for social change. Because if you can't do it with the FA, you probably can't do it.
Speaker 1:The Game Changers Fearless women in football.
