Equal sport opportunities

[Amelanchier]

I have seen the Lionesses calling for girls being given equal opportunities to play football at school. Sounds sensible to me assuming boys get equal opps to play netball (which I think is still largely female for some reason anyone know why?). Personally I was rubbish at team sport and I come from a generation where girls played netball and hockey and boys played football and rugby. I see how passionate people can be about football in particular and anything that keeps girls fit and active has to be good surely? AIBU?

I’ve worked in a number of primary schools and PE has always been taught to boys and girls together. The boys did netball and hockey with the girls, the girls did rugby and football with the boys. I accept its different in secondary and possibly some schools aren’t offering ‘boys’ sports to girls and vice versa but a lot of fuss is being made about primary unnecessarily in my opinion.

i play netball as an adult, and mens netball is starting to be a thing - there is a male England team and near me mixed leagues run (teams are half men half women). Problem is a lot of people seem to think netball is inherently ‘girly’, which it’s not, it’s fast paced and very physical!

Ds (just finished year 8) did netball last year and hockey in Y7. Also football, rugby and cricket.

Netball gets a bit of a girly reputation because when you first learn it at school it is very slow and all about making sure you don't move with the ball, don't get too close to the opponent, clashing arms is a foul, must wear a skirt etc and it is slow and stop start. I played many sports to county level as school kid and just never took to netball because it was depicted as so stuffy. When you compare it to the Superleague its miles apart in speed and physicality. Football still has a bit of boisterousness about it even as 8 year old. I hated having to be restrained by slowly passing a ball around in netball when the boys were rough and tumble rugby tackling each other which having 2 brothers and 2 same age boys as neighbours was way more my thing. At university however I enjoyed playing a more 'aggressive' game of netball.

All sports that are offered in schools should be available to both sexes, I can't see how anyone can argue against that. But I can't get excited about the need to promote football specifically to girls in schools. It's the single biggest, wealthiest sport in the country, and if the area where I live is anything to go by, there are loads of girls teams now. Around here, there are more opportunities for girls to play football than any other sport. Obviously that's not always been the case and I admire those who fought the ridiculous bans in the past but women and girls' football is pretty mainstream now. I'm sure it needs more investment as there is still clearly a huge gap between what is spent on the men's and women's games, but surely that is a matter for the FA to sort out, not the government?
However, if instead of comparing women's football with men's you compare it with other women's sports, it's not particularly badly resourced these days.
In my opinion, school PE should be about health and fitness and giving children a taste of multiple sports and physical activities. We know that traditional competitive sports do not appeal to everyone, particularly not to a lot of teenage girls. I'd rather see public money spent on provision of a wider range of sport and non competitive fitness activities in schools than more on football - for either sex.