It's the cumulative effect of missteps, gaffes and increase in perception that he's not up to the job that will do it for them in the end. It's not one single act taken in isolation. BBC radio news had the King's statement in the headlines.
Harry's mate in the Telegraph doesn't miss a chance to put the boot in....
The Lionesses have done something momentous – and Prince William should have taken his daughter to see it
The team has shown us all what sport can be – and that is something to celebrate
Bryony Gordon
20 August 2023 • 1:41pm
The Lionesses may not have won the World Cup… this time. But it hardly matters, really, when you consider how far they have come, and how much they have done to change the perception of women’s football in this country in the last year or so. For make no mistake: in advancing to the World Cup final just 12 months after winning the European Championships, they have achieved a huge victory for women and young girls all across the country – women and young girls who, just a few short years ago, would have been laughed at for daring to express an interest in the sport.
To understand the significance of today’s game, you have to go far further back than 1966. All the way back to 5th of December 1921, in fact, when the English FA announced a total ban on women playing football, describing the sport as “quite unsuitable for females”, and adding that the practice “should not be encouraged”. It was banned in Wales just a few months later, following complaints from the church, and in the following decade, Spain put a stop to it, saying that football “demanded qualities that were diametrically opposed to those of the women’s bodily constitution.”
The German FA put their feet down in 1955, in order to protect the health of its women and the sensibilities of its men. “In the fight for the ball,” explained the Germans, “female grace disappears, body and soul are inevitably damaged, and the public parading of the body is inoffensive and indecent.”
Back in England, it took until 1971 for the FA to lift the ban, but even then, it kept its distance, allowing a separate organisation to look after the women’s game. It wasn’t until 1993, the year that Mary Earps and Millie Bright were born, that the FA agreed to take on responsibility for the women’s game. But this was hardly the beginning of a golden era for females in football. Indeed, as money poured into the premiership in huge sums during the Nineties, attitudes towards women only got worse. Barely a season would go by without a prominent England footballer being caught in an orgy or a ‘roasting’ scandal. Misogyny was rife, not least on the terraces, where you went as a woman at your own peril.
The arrival of the Wags – the term was coined in 2002 by tabloids – only added to the sense that when it came to football, women were adornments. The 2006 World Cup in Germany was a real nadir – as Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole and Colleen Rooney descended on Baden Baden in designer sunglasses, the press obsessed with their every move, the idea that this same media might one day take women’s football seriously seemed almost laughable. If you happened to be a girl, the so-called beautiful game looked pretty damn ugly.
And yet today, both the BBC and ITV broadcast England’s match with Spain. As the mother of a 10-year-old girl who loves watching and playing football, this feels momentous. It feels momentous because it allows my daughter to see women doing exercise for the way it makes them feel, rather than the way it makes them look. It is momentous because it allows us to see women using sport to make their lives bigger, rather than their waists smaller. It is momentous because for so long, sport has felt like a punishment for women, something we have to do to stay in shape and look good and stay attractive to men.
But here, with the Lionesses, we see what sport can be, if only allowed: something that is sometimes joyous, and sometimes heartbreaking, but always about learning and growing and being part of a community so much bigger than yourself.
It’s a shame that the Lionesses didn’t win, but then it is also a shame that for most of the last century, women weren’t allowed to play football at all. It is a shame that the Prime Minister, and the Prince of Wales, who also happens to be the president of the FA, chose not to make the journey to Australia with their own daughters, who might have enjoyed the opportunity to see the Women’s World Cup final, regardless of the final score. England may not have won, but they’ve achieved something just as valuable: the chance for young girls up and down the country to realise that at long last, football is a language they’re allowed to speak, too.