The FA Women’s Super League kicks off on Monday and this season the games will be televised exclusively by BT Sport. They invited clubs to hear their plans, writes CATHERINE ETOE…
WHEN you walk into a television studio and spot Kelly Smith and Toni Duggan with a film crew in one corner then look up to see 40ft screens of some of their Super League colleagues staring down at you from another, it’s hard not to pinch yourself.
This is women’s football, after all, and we’re not used to the game being taken quite so seriously. Yet that is something BT Sport say they will be doing in an even bigger and better way this season by broadcasting 14 live WSL games, 17 weekly highlights shows and the Conti Cup final.
To shout about their commitment to the game, BT Sport and The FA have invited She Kicks, lots of other journalists plus footballers and managers from the 18 WSL clubs over to BT’s studios in the Olympic Park in Stratford for a special launch day.
Chelsea midfielder Katie Chapman (left) is there with her three boys, as is FA Head of the National Game Kelly Simmons, England boss Mark Sampson, former England skipper Faye White and BT Sport’s “face” of the WSL, Helen Skelton.
Most of them have already heard some of the BT spiel by the time us media bods clamber out of the free shuttle bus and slink into the staff canteen where it is possible to both buy a latte and play ping pong.
They will have to hear some of it again once we’ve been escorted down the celebrity photo lined corridors, into the aircraft hangar of a studio, past an indoor pitch, beyond trays of breakfast goodies and into a darkened corner containing a fancy desk, chairs and more giant pictures of WSL players.
Like all good hosts, BT Sport’s Executive Producer for Football Stephen Cook apologises for any repetition in advance of his chat but no-one seems to care given that it contains the news that the broadcaster will be doing everything “properly”.
“It’s proper TV coverage, 12 cameras, HD cameras,” he says. Means nothing to me either but the next bit certainly does. “These games are going to be covered by a high quality team behind the cameras. Guys who have worked on World Cups, Women’s World Cups, Champions League finals, proper TV people, proper football people too who know the game.”
There will be a proper presenter in former Blue Peter star Helen Skelton and proper pundits too, namely players and managers, all the sort of people who ought to know their Jordan Nobbs from their Jade Moores.
The viewers should get to distinguish them too because BT Sport also aim to turn the players into people that a television audience will grow to know and love.
Helen Skelton introduces some of the players…
“It’s about building character, we want our viewers to get to know you as people as well as players,” he adds. “We have a distinct style at BT Sport and we like to do this with a sense of humour and promote our characters in a different way.”
Indeed they do and it is here that we get to look over at a couple of big screens to watch hilarious footage of former Liverpool character Michael Owen making a wally of himself with a microphone and some other famous blokes doing similar things. In the weeks to come we’ll be able to see WSL players doing the same, but behind our sniggers we learn that there is a deadly serious point to all this.
“Without BT Sport and our media partners backing us and carrying our message out to the masses we will not be able to move the game forward at the pace we think it deserves,” says FAWSL Director Sally Horrox. “We hope the sport will become semi-professional and professional within the next four to eight years and for that we need exposure, we need support, we need investment. We are convinced that in this room we have players who can bring quality football to you on the pitch but please support us and give us that exposure.”
The powers that be hope that one of the beneficiaries of all this will be the England team and Mark Sampson is here to emphasise that point, although when he walks on to the small platform he’s as goggle eyed as the rest of us.
“Congratulations to BT Sport,” he says. “It’s the first time I’ve been in this building and as a football fan it’s one of the coolest studios I’ve ever been in and it shows how far the game has come.”
Sampson says the challenge now is to see how far the game can go and he hopes that the boost in playing and coaching standards prompted by the WSL will push those English players in the league to up their game.
“Face” Helen Skelton rounds up the half hour presentation with a quick chat with one of the players who has upped her game so much she’s now the new England captain – Man City’s Steph Houghton.
“To be part of a competitive league and have internationals come over and want to play in our league is brilliant for us as players and individuals and the clubs,” says Steph. “Also the introduction of League 2 gives other clubs the opportunity to try and get themselves promoted and for clubs in League 1 to try and stay in that league and set the standards as high as the last three years. Everybody is just dying for the league to start.”
Some of us were dying for lunch to start too but with the presentation over, BT Sport and the clubs were offering us the chance to talk to players and managers for the next couple of hours so we skipped the food and caught up with a few of them.
Watch this space for that and more..
ALL IMAGES: CATHERINE ETOE
SHE KICKS – the online community for women’s football
