Final score at Tallaght Stadium last night

Birdie writes:

The Irish Women’s Team had a world cup qualifier game against The Netherlands (Euro Champs) last night. We lost 2-0 but are still in the running for qualification.

I’ve been very impressed with the growth of the women’s game in Ireland, albeit a decade behind other countries, this particular team are exciting to watch especially Denise O’Sullivan [player of the match].

Despite this exciting time for the sport, I’m left wondering why our national broadcaster is not showing their games?

This competition is a big deal or do RTÉ just pick and choose when they want to play the equality game (I know terrible word play).

Anyone?

 

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59 thoughts on “As Not Seen On TV

    1. qwerty123

      The person most likely didn’t realize this when sending this into broadsheet, realized later and now makes the point that it should be on the national broadcaster free to air. Its sad when an attempted fake outrage goes horribly wrong, hilarious for everyone else though.

      1. Birdie

        @qwerty123 I don’t have fake outrage. I watched it on Eir1.

        You’re totally missing my point. My argument is that it should be on the national broadcaster station because, it’s a World Cup Qualifier game and we should be encouraging more women into the sport.

        1. qwerty123

          The title of the post is “as not seen on TV” It was on TV.

          You are using the equality stick, as you wrote above, when it is not relevant in the slightest. Another company brought the rights to it. Happens all the time in every sport, male and female.

          Your argument should be why is RTE sport “poo poo” as opposed to be some anti equality bunch of misogynists. And trust me, RTE would take any sport they can get.

          Better luck next time.

          1. Birdie

            @qwerty – I can actually hear you shouting as you type.

            I’d no say on the title of the post.

            My argument, which you clearly can’t see, is that national teams playing for a big competition like the WC should be given equal coverage.

            You’ll never agree with me because you have decided not to look at the bigger picture.

  1. Birdie

    Yeah it was… but my point is it should be on one of our public broadcaster TV channels aka RTÉ well I believe it should be. It’s the Olympic Qualifiers for starters plus women’s sport at that level deserves equal coverage.

    1. Owen C

      why does women’s sport deserve equal coverage? 4000 people attended the game, and this is apparently the largest ever attendance at a women’s international match in ireland. The sport is obviously less popular than the male version, in terms of players, in terms of attendance at games, in terms of viewers on tv, so why should it get equal coverage? Serious question.

        1. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

          Well, yes. Because you’ve put equality in quote marks I’m assuming you’re defining it incorrectly on purpose. Good ploy.

        2. Listrade

          The Under 20s six nations gets to be broadcast live on RTE. Donnybrook holds 6000, most games get about 4000.

          If we’re comparing like-for-like.

          1. Rob_G

            Was this an U-20s match, or a senior match? And the Six Nations is competition, whereas this was a qualifier (and I believe that rugby matches are played usually on weekend afternoons, rather than mid-week prime time).

            Anyway, the terrestial channels are congested enough as it is with football and rugby without adding further matches; RTÉ should create one or two stand-alone sports channels to clear them from the scheduling.

        3. Nigel

          Isn’t the common response amongst men to women asking for anything to feel like the women are getting more? You should watch that.

      1. Birdie

        Hi @Owen, the answer is in your response. It is becoming more popular despite the poor TV coverage as in via a national broadcaster.

        You need to look at the bigger picture, look at it from a strategic point of view. As a society we should be telling girls and boys that they are entitled to play any sport they want and their sex does not mean they are less equal. If you decide to play a sport at the highest level we as a society will support you equally at the highest level by showing your efforts on our national broadcaster.

          1. Birdie

            @Gooch Gooch Gooch& @qwerty123 You’re behaving like… no not children because they have more cop on and empathy, you’re just behaving like bullies.

            I made a typo and you’re seizing on that as to discredit my support for this team. Seriously just cop on.

          2. qwerty123

            The team you watched last night on eirsport1? And then complained it wasn’t on TV?
            As an ex player, you have to be used to some light ribbing, no? Like when you may have accidentally threw the football into touch as an example? a common mistake made in soccer.

          3. Birdie

            For the last time… I had no say in the title of the post.

            I’m not going to repeat my argument again to you because you don’t care.

        1. Owen C

          “looking at it from a strategic point of view” is an entirely different argument to the one looking for blunt “equality of coverage”. At least keep the argument consistent.

      2. david

        Maybe if they replaced the whole men’s team with the women ,they might be more sucessful and less of an embarrassment.
        I am not a soccer fan but saying that
        Ireland shone under jack Charleton
        And the way the FAI treated him was enough to put you off soccer for life
        Since then its all down hill

    2. Johnny Keenan

      You’re right Birdie.
      The more hype Irish female football gets the more popular it will become. That’s the way hype works.
      As already said though RTE don’t have the rights to show the game. They did feature it as headline sports news over the big CL Simi final though. Which is big progress.

      It was only this time last year that the women who represent our national team had to highlight their situation in order to get the basics
      https://www.google.ie/amp/www.the42.ie/irish-womens-sports-teams-treatment-3326713-Apr2017/%3famp=1

      Now with a little more hype and support they might be going to the World Cup.
      Our next game against Norway is a vital one.
      Obviously the team has to be good and it seems to be on the rise.

      There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the national women’s team is giving some serious support by the media they could easily sell out Tallaght Stadium and maybe the match could be moved to the national stadium.

      What makes something popular is the belief that something is worth something

      The Irish Women’s Football team is really becoming something special

      C’mon Ireland

    3. Dan

      No sport, men or women’s ‘deserves’ equal coverage. The audience for women’s football just isn’t there. Part of that is due to the fact the standard is very low. Women’s tennis gets shown on RTE and it’s of a very high standard. It’s not down to gender, just quality.

      1. Birdie

        I totally disagree with you Dan. The standard is not very low. The level of skill on display last night and at last years Euros was fantastic.

        The women’s game is great to watch. There’s a lack of fake dives and proper physicality with tackles which is a welcome change and harked back to when the game was not corrupted by too much cash.

        The audience is there, but as Johnny said it’s all down to exposure. I’m also talking about our national team playing to get into the World Cup.

        1. dan

          I have seen a number of women’s international matches and UK league games – the standard unfortunately is not there. A semi-professional men’s team would beat any women’s international team, and that’s not just down to strength, but skill. It may get better, but that will take decades. Again, television stations are there to sell audiences to advertisers, women’s football does not get big enough audiences. The audience is not there, if it was, a lot more people would go to games. They don’t.

          1. Birdie

            We’ll have to agree to disagree on the quality Dan.

            With regards to the audience… you can only build on an audience if there is more exposure in the media. The issue is, as I see it, too many people see the game as inferior due to a traditional legacy attitude that women can’t play. They can play world class soccer and they can fill out stadiums as they do in The Netherlands and the US.

            The more girls that you can get playing and involved, the more talent will come through. This for me is about the long game, we should look to how the Dutch built a great soccer culture and community. It takes time and it takes media exposure.

            Anyhow I’m looking forward to when we take on Norway.

  2. Martco

    suspect it’s possibly due to the timing of the ko over any equality suspicions

    last night was a big CL night (imagine Bertie might out again with dose manflu well played LPL)…that ladies game ko @7pm

      1. Brother Barnabas

        my 6-year-old on the way to school this morning declared himself a liverpool fan

        i pretended i didn’t hear it

  3. The Old Boy

    A subscription broadcaster has bought the rights to show a large amount of women’s football. If you were to suddenly decree that the “important” matches were to be plucked from it so that they can be shown for free, then there is no way such a deal would be profitable. The net result would obviously be that a lot less women’s football (or hockey, or men’s cricket, or any niche sport you care to mention) will get televised.

    In any event, there is likely to be a lot less sport shown on free-to-air television in the near future as it becomes increasingly uneconomical for such stations to compete for the rights. The argument that some games are of such national importance that they ought to be freely available is quite a thin one in any event.

    1. Brother Barnabas

      not disagreeing with any of that, old boy, but you could also argue that the promotion of increased participation in sport among girls (among boys and girls, but especially girls – http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/the-vast-majority-of-girls-quit-sport-so-how-do-we-keep-them-fit-1.2962622) is actually of “national importance”

      it’s true that women’s soccer is a fairly niche sport in ireland, but that’s got a lot to do with it being relatively new, under-promoted and under-resourced

      a big factor in getting more girls to play is to showcase it – and, i’d say, last night’s match was a lost opportunity in that respect

      1. The Old Boy

        Likewise, I don’t disagree, but when the only available options when it comes to buying rights are “show all of it, or none at all”, these sorts of requests simply don’t stand up to scrutiny. Every international women’s football match is televised. That’s remarkable compared to a few years ago.

        By the same token, I’m not particularly fond of the fact that every pissant men’s international friendly is televised live on RTÉ 2 come hell or high water.

          1. The Old Boy

            There is a reference in a comment under another post to an “old bike” and I am struggling to resist making a very nasty jibe at the author’s expense, so I am trying to stay as nice as possible.

        1. Seamus

          Soccer friendlies are not broadcast live on rte2. Eir have the rights to these. Rte gets a highlights package from eir

          1. The Old Boy

            I stand corrected. I have been out of the country for a while.

            *Hmm, seem to have used the wrong email address for that.

    2. Murtles

      +1 there’s such a scramble now between the Eirsports and BTSports and Skys that even if RTE had the proverbial balls to showcase our top sports people in football, there’d be more phoney claims to increase the licence fee to cover costs. God forbid they’d axe the costs associated with Fair City (see Secret RTE Producers twitter if it’s to be believed). On the other side there are men and women that are top of the sports field in THE WORLD and not a sniff of them to be found on any RTE broadcast (swimmer Mona McSharry to name but one).

      1. Birdie

        +1 @Brother Barnabas & @Murtles – this is a bigger dicussion as I mentioned earlier… It’s about showing our children that if they represent our country they get equal support from Irish society, in this case society being the broadcaster that we pay towards… I really don’t see the argument with that.

        I played soccer during a time when I had every misogynistic term thrown at me. As an adult I look back at the time when I was a child and shudder. It wasn’t “normal” for a girl to play soccer then, they only way you can normalise it on masse is via exposure.

  4. AFoxamongpidgeons

    I don’t hear complaining when Sky have the men’s matches though? but I do agree, game should have been on TV, RTE or TV3.

    1. Nigel

      Literally everything to do with men’s sports comes with men complaining. It’s a dull constant roar, so maybe it’s hard to even notice any more.

  5. Gooch Gooch Gooch

    Liverpool v Man City in the Champions League quarter final was on at the time.

    Far more interesting to watch.

  6. Seamus

    Ladies Gaelic Football is the national women’s sport. Plenty of it on fta TV and gives TG4 its highest ratings. 46,000 at last years All Ireland final, three times the attendance at the Women’s RWC final in Belfast and ten times the attendance at last nights event.

    1. rotide

      It’s telling that this comment is this far down.

      That final was actually the highest attended womens sports event in europe last year.

      Birdie might have a decent point to make in this post, unfortunately it’s completely confused and ridiculously ill informed

      1. Frilly Keane

        ah hould up you

        there were also 2 curtain raisers that day
        The Junior AI Derry v Fermanagh Drawn Game 2-10 to 3-7 (replay saw Fermanagh take it 2-10 0-11)
        And the Intermediate Tipp v Tyrone – 1-13 to 1-10
        before the main feature of Dublin Mayo, who on their own are big travelling sides

        so you had 6 different banks of supporters
        and in a year that didn’t feature Cork, so it was bringing in new viewers (would you like to see Cork Ladies AI stats Rottie, ’cause tis no problem)
        additionally the numbers in the years running up to that were coming up close to last years record

        so don’t be such a snot

        1. rotide

          I know all this. I’m making the point that womens GAA is very very well supported.

          It could be used to reinforce whatever point bridie was trying in vain to make, but she and others were just too quick to jump to the SJW nuclear option.

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