I was right, women's football sucks.
This young lady, who is no doubt part of New Zealand's female footballing elite, managed to score thee own goals in one match. No, sorry, in the first half of one match. Within 35 minutes to be precise
When female footballers complain they only get paid a fraction that the men do, this is one of the reasons why. Three own goals does not see the fans leaving the stadium thinking thier ticket price was money well spent. It certainly doesn't make them inclined to spend three or four times that on their next ticket
Quality sport commands high ticket prices, sponsorship and advertising revenue, all of which are required to pay high wages to talented sportsmen people. This level of play does not
What it does do, is provide good material for the bloopers DVD
But wait. According to the Guardian, this is not something we should expel mirth at. We shouldn't be cocking our sides laughing at the misfortune of the poor woman who can't decide which way she's supposed to be shooting
“A hat-trick of own goals. This is tremendous.” I tweeted
A tad bland, but it gets the point across. A couple of laughing emojis would have spiced it up a tad. And maybe a smiling poo
Not everyone, however, found it funny. One correspondent quote-tweeted my post with the response: “Imagine suffering what is probably the worst day of your career and having people tweet about how tremendous it is for clicks.
Any fool professional footballer know, if you cock up on the pitch during a live game, people are going to Tweet about you. That's part of being famous. Any contestant on Dancing on Ice will be aware they will get the piss taken out of them if then end up on their arse during an ice tango
There are a lot of humourless people on Twitter, but they are to be ignored, not indulged by searching your soul in the columns of the Guardian
Elite sport is brutal. There is no place to hide. People choose to do it. And it’s only a game. But did he have a point?
No
Clearly it wasn’t “tremendous” for the player. I hadn’t even considered her feelings in my haste to join to the latest viral moment – she looked distraught as she was substituted before half-time
Her feelings are irrelevant. She did a funny on an international stage, while being well aware of things like Twitter, Youtube and Blogger. If her feelings can't handle a ribbing for something like scoring three own goals, she shouldn't be in the sport
But her feelings aren't in question here, are they? She may well have gone back to the dressing room and said, 'Fuck me, another one for the blooper show'. It's your feelings we're discussing here, isn't it. You're making this about you
The first thing to address is the obsession with social media – and quite possibly my low-level addiction. What is my actual aim in posting this, or anything? The dopamine of retweets, a desire to be...
Yadda yadda, blah blah
You need to have this conversation with a shrink.
Second, is the reaction different because it’s a woman making a mistake (or three mistakes) on a football pitch?
Modern feminism strikes again. Women are softer than men. Women are more fragile. Women should be treated better in case we hurt their delicate feelings
This isn't even close to equality. Women want the same pay as men, but can't handle being heckled from Twitter, never mind the stands. Of course this is purely the opinion of the Guardian columnist at this time. I've read nothing to say this young lady has any problem at all with taking a few digs
Had Harry Maguire done it [...] would the response be the same?
It doesn't matter if the answer to that is yes or no, the response should be the same. And this female footballer should have giggled if she read your tweet, but be cringing and rather annoyed is she reads your article. With no corroborating evidence what-so-ever, you've painted her as a fragile snowflake, which is clearly your opinion of all women
The question I ask is would Harry Maguire have done it? The answer to that is probably no
The difficulty here is that alongside the reasonable and considered responses on Twitter coming to my defence came those tedious and depressingly expected ones: seeing this clip as conclusive “proof” that the women’s game isn’t any good and that “you can’t laugh at anything any more”, while yelling snowflake in permanent caps lock at my correspondent. I don’t want to be the mouthpiece for that crowd. I don’t want to be on the Joe Rogan side of this culture war.
Well then you've just set your stall out for all to see and it's far to the left of the market. This is typical left think (in that no thinking has taken place) and I can see you are actually allied with the type of people who don't think you shouldn't laugh at a woman in case it hurts her feelings
Even if Moore hasn’t turned on her phone or logged into Twitter or Instagram in the past few days she’ll know that the football world has seen the footage
Unless she's a complete moron, it will be utterly obvious to het that this will be all over the internet
She is known for that, and not for her previous 49 caps or her club career in Germany and now Liverpool...
Yes, but it's not the end of the world. I remember Gareth Southgate missing a very important penalty.
She might be remembered as the woman who scored three own goals. She might not be remembered at all. She might go on to do great things.
...or her advocacy for LGBQT+ inclusion in sport
Oh dear. But maybe it is time to bring some men into the female game? Maybe they could recruit from the Sunderland team of 2002/3. It wasn't a one man effort, but they did manage to score three own goals in 7 minutes
I remember Tweeting about it at the time...
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