And to think, they once banned this. They barred women from playing in Football Association-affiliated grounds for 51 years, the wise old gentlemen.
“The game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged,” stated the FA’s Consultative Committee in 1921.
Nice one, lads.
And so, this was not just a landmark victory for Sarina Wiegman’s Lionesses, for Cumbria’s Georgia Stanway and the rest. When Chloe Kelly’s pleasingly grubby close-range shot clinched the European Championship in extra-time, it also completed one of the greatest comebacks in organised sports in this country.
Yes, the results are well and truly in. Those who ruled against it, and indeed those who have sneered at its revival at every stage since…well, sorry chaps – you lost. They won.
If you are still of the view that women’s football is not worth the candle, not worth a basis of respect and indeed serious and grown-up admiration, then you are shouting into an ever-widening void here in 2022.
You are no longer, it has to be said, paying attention. Here, you were covering your eyes to the deftness of Ella Toone’s opening goal and the poaching persistence of Kelly’s winner.
More broadly, you are swerving the technical refinement and competitive courage of Wiegman’s team; the passing vision of Keira Walsh, the running intellect of Fran Kirby, the all-round superiority of Lucy Bronze, the calm composure of Leah Williamson, the dynamism of Beth Mead, the strength of Millie Bright, the goalkeeping nerve of Mary Earps...
All of them, in fact. Still disparage this, these champions, and it is very much your loss. This victory over Germany, after a typically tense, nervy, compelling and at times bruising final, was everyone else’s gain.
It was an evening to savour for 87,192 at Wembley and for those who have driven the women’s game in England forward, from that enforced position at the back of the grid.
It was a night of fulfilled childhood dreams for Barrow’s Stanway, who has done that town and this county proud.
It was a night, all in all, of justified national celebration, of elite performance and nerve; something more overdue than it ever needed to be – yet surely sweeter, in the moment of English glory, because of that fact.
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