William and women's football

[Nono22972]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-12413893/amp/Prince-William-not-attend-World-Cup-final-watch-Englands-Lionesses-face-against-Spain.html

One again, William's neglecting women's football. The Lionesses made history. It is the first time that the English team (male or female) reached the World Cup final since 1966. We all know that if the men had reached the final, he would've been there and probably would've brought George with him.

Queen Letizia and her daughter Sofia will be attending. What's William's excuse? You are président of the Football Association.

This is really disappointing but I'm not really surprised. The young generation of royals are such a joke compared to previous generations. Yes, the Queen’s children had their controversies but when it comes to royal work, they always got the job done.

It just isn’t true that women’s football is valued less than men’s. 10 years ago maybe. But the Euro finals (which William attended & recorded a message with Charlotte for) got the biggest crowd in history - of the men’s or women’s game. People are following like never before. Matildamania has swept Australia too. It’s massive. It never used to be shown anywhere, now it’s on BBC1 and screened in every pub. It just isn’t true that nobody cares or takes it seriously anymore.

As to why W didn’t book his tickets years in advance - well England had to qualify first! And the qualifiers started 2 months before Australia reopened international borders to travellers. A lot was in doubt at the time. Not to mention there’s really no point going all the way there just for football, it’s not the same as going to Germany or France to watch a match, and a tour in Australia was unthinkable at the time and takes months/years to plan (quarantine was a week even for vaccinated tourists).

I think it’s very ironic that the enormous amount of effort female players have put into successfully bringing women’s football to a mainstream audience is being downplayed purely to make a mean-spirited jibe at a random bloke you have a completely different beef with.

Hes in an absolute no win situation with this

'Why's he not flying to Australia to watch a single football match'

'Why on earth has he flown to Australia with all the security it entails for one match when he could have supported them from home. So much for saving the planet'

Poor guy can't win this one

Ridiculous, he’s on holiday and also King of Australia as many have pointed out let alone the carbon footprint.

As an aside, what a pity the England team’s performance in the Netball World Cup got so little attention relative to football. It’s almost as if women’s sport only gets attention when they play something that’s traditionally male dominated.

Because its the women's final he has no interest. Womens football isn't as important as men's football, it's just girls kicking a ball, they are not actual athletes like the men.

It’s not a binary. Not flying 40 hours plus to Australia and back to watch one match does not mean that William has no interest in women’s football.

William is the Prince of
Wales, not England, and one day he'll be King of the United Kingdom, not England.
He should only go if he'd also go to support the other home nations if they were in the same position, and I doubt he would.

@serenster there is zero evidence he is interested.

He doesn't even attend the women's final at Wimbledon though he's always at the men's.

He was at the women’s Euro finals last year.

Exactly! And it's not just the women. William has been president of the FA since 2006. In that time, I've never seen him attend a youth game and has only attended 2 women's games. But, you regularly see him attend Men's games. It's clear that this position is nothing more than hobby for him.

Desperate to find reasons to hate them all… who’d be royal!

By the way - I’ve been attending women’s matches since the 90s where the stands would be virtually empty. An absolutely extraordinary amount of work has gone into bringing women’s sport to the mainstream despite repeatedly being told nobody would be interested and men didn’t care. Yet record crowds, massive audiences prime time on BBC1, thousands of people in the streets, and yes the POW at the women’s Euros… including boys and men. Boys are looking up to female athletes as role models because of what they can do! Men are getting excited and talking about watching women play and admiring what they can do. So to say the same old “nobody cares about women’s football, you’ll never ever get men to watch it” in 2023 when that view has been conclusively been proven wrong - wow. And just using the sport as collateral and downplaying that work all because you hate one single bloke.

There was a load of people moaning during a recent tournament that included wales and England. Who would Wiliam support of it came to a game against eachother. How he was wrong either way.

There were quite a lot of Welsh people who felt it was a good representation of why William shouldn’t be Prince of Wales

From the international stage point of view William Can’t win. Especially as there push back against the common wealth.

I also think that it’s good to see W&K prioritising their Family holiday. Family time is very important.

Nice attempt to try and show horn M&H into a conversation that completely irrelevant to them.

There’s a big difference between the Spanish royals going and British royals going to a commonwealth country.

He’d get slated for going for a short time, both on environmental grounds and on the “flew all this way and couldn’t even be bothered to spend time with any Aussies” grounds.

Thats also very likely why it’s not Felipe and Leonor going - sending the King or heir would turn into state visit territories. That would happen if any of the Brits went.

As to why W didn’t book his tickets years in advance - well England had to qualify first!

And going by the experience of the men's football didn't think they'd make it past the quarters anyway 😅

I think that the most appropriate thing from the Royal side is that David Hurley is there. I'd be very surprised if he wasn't.

Leonor has apparently just started her military training which will mean she is unable to travel.

People want to watch their national team win at something - who’d a thunk it!!

The date of the World Cup final would have been agreed 4 years ago, regardless of who qualified for it. If it was a mens tournament, that date would have been kept free for 'important' men such as William, to be there to support other men playing sports.

Because it's a womens tournament, it wasn't even in his schedule. He has in fact gone on his holidays because the tournament was that irrelevant.

That's the hard truth. Women in sports are less important. The country will not be at a standstill for them on sunday because they are women.

Difficult to swallow but true.

It's just a game. Not anything important. The hysteria around football is daft.

So you would’ve expected Prince William to take a 45h round trip to the other side of the world to watch Colombia vs Spain in the women’s final? Were you equally annoyed he didn’t hop across the channel to watch USA vs Netherlands in 2019, just in case England had made it that far?

He attended the Euro finals last year and did a video message of support with his daughter.

The team (who would know) don’t agree with you:

"Yeah, Prince William, I've said in recent interviews, he's always supported the team. So in 2015 in Canada the World Cup, he came to see us before that tournament. And yeah, he's invited us to places and he's just always been in touch.And before this Euros, they said, 'Oh we're going to have a special visit' and I knew it was him. It was lovely to have that embrace with him, apparently he broke protocols doing that!” And "just before I came into the jungle he hand wrote us a letter about my retirement."(Jill Scott)

”The first thing Prince William said [at her investiture] was ‘Oh, I’m not used to seeing you dress differently’ because obviously he came to a lot of the things before the Euros and he has come to see us before in training” (Lucy Bronze)

but the representative (or whatever he is? president?) of the FA might turn up to watch an England team who have qualified for the very first world cup outside of England since FOR EVER might bother his sorry backside and turn up?

You could tell at the Euros presentation that William was a genuine supporter of the women's team - and they acknowledged it in the way they greeted him.

Some people just like to pick holes for the hell of it.

Missing the point but, oh how short memories are... England were last in a World Cup final, 11 days ago.

We've been in 4 Rugby (Union) Men's World Cup Finals since 1966; 8 for the women.
We've been in 17 for cricket (combined) and currently hold 2 - I don't recall the Bank Holiday we got for either of those.
We also hold the Physical Disability Rugby League World Cup (7 men's Rugby League finals)

Once each for Netball (as above) and Hockey (men's only)

Football is not the be all and end all.

And to REALLY go off tangent but it's related to both the Women's World Cup semi final and the netball - if it's not Test cricket, it's not the Ashes. It's just England vs Australia. And that's fine.