AMANDA PLATELL: I was wrong. I now realise it is women who are the best at the beautiful game
Confession time. I’ve had a lifelong love affair with football, going back to when I was a child in Australia playing kick-about with my brothers.
I’m a Spurs fan and watch every game with my mates on my big HD TV screen when I can’t get to the game.
And yet like many fans, I sneered at women’s football for years. Too slow, characterless, girls with ponytails trying to play a man’s game.
Without the sheer animalism and physicality of the men, it seemed to me to be a very poor relation to the Premier League battles I love.
But tomorrow I will be sitting in front of the TV with my friends nervously waiting for kick-off in England’s first game in the Women’s World Cup. To a man, and woman, we will all be cheering on England’s Lionesses.
But tomorrow I will be sitting in front of the TV with my friends nervously waiting for kick-off in England’s first game in the Women’s World Cup. To a man, and woman, we will all be cheering on England’s Lionesses (pictured)
So what has changed? Why has a die-hard sceptic of the women’s game suddenly transformed into a fan? Well, we can start with last year’s blistering 2-1 victory for the Lionesses in the Euro championship final.
The skill — back-heels, perfectly judged chips — was outrageous. It blew the roof off Wembley. But there’s something else. Women play as if they love the game, and with grace and dignity.
They don’t cry foul if someone steps on their little toe; they don’t constantly cheat and berate the refs and contest yellow cards like the men. In short they aren’t spoilt prima donnas. The men get vast sums — some of them many hundreds of thousands of pounds each time they play — and the women are paid a pittance in comparison.
Some of the Lionesses are donating their £2,000 per game fee during the World Cup to charity.
Then there’s the crowd. Male fans at games can be a particular breed of foul-mouthed, often horribly racist thugs, fuelled by booze and too often now cocaine, while the women’s games tend to be watched by families just wanting a nice day out
And there are tales from friends who say the Lionesses have encouraged sport-shy daughters to kick a ball and try to bend it like Beckham. It’s given them confidence.
In short, it truly is the beautiful game when women play. I was wrong to dismiss it for so long.
Which is why tomorrow I will be munching ham and cheese toasties, waiting till noon to crack open the wine and beer — and cheering on our Lionesses to victory.
Doctor? My oath!
Oncologist Dr Clive Peedell encourages other doctors to make ‘a fortune’ during industrial action by charging the NHS for overtime.
On Twitter he boasts: ‘I will lose a day’s pay [for striking] but am going to claim BMA rates for my extra ad hoc clinic work, paid at 3-4 times my normal hourly rate. I am happy to repeat this action.’
All while seriously ill patients are denied treatment. So much for the Hippocratic oath. One of its tenets is to ‘do no harm’.
How can sailor cast away pet?
Much admiration for the Australian sailor adrift in the Pacific for two months eating raw fish and drinking rainwater with only his trusty rescue mutt Bella by his side.
Yet now we learn that Tim Shaddock left behind his loyal companion after they were rescued.
How unutterably cruel. Cast him away!
Much admiration for the Australian sailor adrift in the Pacific for two months eating raw fish and drinking rainwater with only his trusty rescue mutt Bella by his side
Despite claiming on Newsnight that he only met paedophile Jeffrey Epstein once after his jail sentence ended, new documents claim Prince Andrew also met him earlier that year when Epstein was under house arrest.
Slimmed-down monarchy?
The King should just get rid of this troublesome prince.
Not again! Actor Sean Bean has suffered his 25th screen death.
He deserved to die betraying Frodo in The Lord Of The Rings but, crikey, he carks it this time as pacifist Douglas Bennett in the BBC’s World On Fire.
Am guessing that all he asks when he’s sent a new script is: ‘How soon do I turn up my toes?’
Kate’s fizzically fit!
Kate Moss wore a fabulous red dress to launch her latest Diet Coke advert, looking stunning thanks to her booze and drug-free lifestyle and new wellness brand Cosmoss.
All that Coke’s clearly worked for her!
Kate Moss wore a fabulous red dress to launch her latest Diet Coke advert, looking stunning thanks to her booze and drug-free lifestyle and new wellness brand Cosmoss
Magistrates decided Husina Hussain, who floored a manageress at a bowling alley before attacking police and calling them ‘f*****g whites’, does not have to wear a ‘sobriety tag’ on her ankle as it would interfere with her sacred washing preparations for Friday prayers.
Jolly good, but I thought devout Muslims didn’t drink alcohol.
Jobsworth councils have issued a record number of on-the-spot fines, hitting kids climbing trees and folk feeding birds.
They’d have had a bumper pay day on Hampstead Heath this week with children in the branches and me shamelessly feeding my family of magpies.
While on holiday in Saint-Tropez Brooklyn Beckham shows off his numerous tattoos — including one stretching right across his ballooning tummy that, I think, reads Beckham.
Hope that his tattooist is stocking up on plenty of ink, given that his cooking career has put so much more flesh on his bones.
Westminster wars
While applauding Home Secretary Suella Braverman for the arrival of the first barge to house migrants, how can it be right they get ensuite bedrooms, free meals and travel, and access to GPs — while 227,000 Brits are homeless and we all struggle to get a doctor’s appointment?
Having been PM for 49 days, Liz Truss walks away with an £18,660 payoff. Now we learn the top civil servant she sacked, Tom Scholar, was given a £457,000 payout.
It makes you wonder how much we are paying mandarins whose sole intention appears to be to thwart the will of the democratically elected government.
Shirt shrift for Just Stop Oil
Much amusement after a YouTube group with 1.4 million followers surrounded Just Stop Oil protesters — preventing them from blocking the road during rush hour — while wearing orange T-shirts bearing the words Just Stop P***ing Everyone Off.
Was their action legal? Will the cops get involved? Surely there is only one real question. Where do I buy that T-shirt?
Much amusement after a YouTube group with 1.4 million followers surrounded Just Stop Oil protesters — preventing them from blocking the road during rush hour — while wearing orange T-shirts bearing the words Just Stop P***ing Everyone Off
On the BBC Today programme, discussing the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, a newsreader said ULEZ was ‘a tax on high-polluting vehicles’ while presenter Nick Robinson called it a ‘tax for people who drive dirty cars’.
To most of us, they’re just cars — neither dirty nor high-polluting. When did the BBC become the propaganda arm of London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan?
A survey, clearly commissioned by a bloke with, er, a sense of humour, concludes that one of the things we are most likely to do to de-stress is clean the house — not a thought that ever entered a man’s head.
And when has heaving a vacuum cleaner around ever made a woman happy?
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