One of the most common slurs against any football code is that it’s a “girl’s game.” American football fans think soccer is a “girl’s game.” Rugby fans like to call American football a “girl’s game,” mostly because they wear shoulder pads and helmets — and guys, we tried gridiron without the helmets and pads. People died. Trust me, the padding is there for a reason…
But I digress. The whole idea of “girl’s game” being an insult is really pretty silly. After all, girls play every kind of football there is. You could literally say any football game is a girl’s game…
Women’s Soccer. Of course, Association football is probably the most popular form of football played by women. The USA team’s victory in the Women’s World Cup in 1999 served as a springboard for WUSA, a women’s pro soccer league in America that lasted for three years and may be relaunched soon after the 2007 Women’s World Cup in China this September. For a while, players like Mia Hamm (pictured) and Brandi Chastain were nearly as popular as any male athlete in America. (Hamm once kicked a 45-yard field goal during a tryout with the Kansas City Chiefs. She refused to sign, though, because she felt she could do more for her form of football than the NFL.) There’s also a Women’s Premier League in England, which may be the only league where Arsenal wins a title this year…
Women’s Rugby. Of course, sometimes women just want a little more contact in their football, and so they jump into a scrum and run with the ball, just like the men. Nearly every university in America has a women’s rugby club, and Rugby Football Union gladly supports women’s rugby. It’s not just union, though; there are also Women’s Rugby League clubs in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. New Zealand has dominated both league and union World Cup competition this decade. Do the ladies perform the haka like the men? I’d like to see a YouTube clip of that…
Women’s Gridiron. Then there are the women who want to knock you on your ass. Literally. So they don the same body armor the men wear and take to the gridiron. A few teenage girls — most notably Holly Mangold, little sister of New York Jets’ center Nick Mangold — play on their high school boys’ football team.
One day, Holly will play in the Women’s Professional Football League, which has been around since 1999 and is developing quite the cult following. And that nothing to do with the fact that Brigid Mullen is willing to go beach-frolicking for Sports Illustrated. Not at all.
Women’s Footy. Finally, the unique football games in Australia and Ireland attract plenty of female players. The Victorian Women’s Football League leads the charge for women’s footy down under, and Ladies’ Gaelic Football is the most popular women’s sport in Ireland with over 100,000 women and girls playing at all levels in 2006. In fact, these two countries have held International Rules Football test matches for the female footy teams. Ireland won the first match, 130-15, and promptly took pity on the Aussie gals, offering to play the second test match with an oblong ball, just to make it more interesting. The Aussies declined and lost by a much closer margin (39-18) in the second test match.
And there you have it. So if anyone tells you that your favorite football code is a “girl’s game,” just say, “So’s your game, dumbass!”, and point them to this post. Seriously, point them here. I’ll take any traffic boost I can get these days…
