An intriguing read, especially for a man like me, immersed in the same beautiful game, Sally Freedman’s “Get your tits out for the lads” is a difficult one to describe. Without having read the back cover, but with having knowledge of the book and its premise prior to picking up this title in Fair Play Publishing’s pre-Christmas sale, I knew we would be delving into the murky world of sexism in football. Released around the time of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, before the antics of Luis Rubiales in front of a massive viewership on stage at Stadium Australia, this book could almost thank the disgraced Spanish manager for the perfect advertising pitch. Sexism is rife in football.
The book seems to be split into two parts, and I’m not sure if it’s intentional. Firstly, we have a timeline of the author’s life in football, and it is a fabulous read. This is someone who has followed their dreams, played and supported football all her life and made life-changing decisions to forge a successful career in the game at the highest level. Migration from England to Australia and then to Switzerland, she is a determined person willing to make huge sacrifices to get to where she wants to be in life, but that path is littered with challenges; we read about those challenges regarding sexism, and this serves to open our eyes to the minor and major struggles encountered being a woman in a male-dominated domain.
By chapter five (of eleven) we are almost up to the present day, or at least up to when the book was written, and the book moves into chapters that vary from accounts of football matches, lists of sexist stories from the media, some of which you will have seen and other that you wouldn’t, and a chapter on the 2022 (Men’s) World Cup in Qatar. These are well-written, and the first-hand accounts of the 2022 Champions League in Paris, along with the earlier account of the Euro 2020 final in London, confirm a lot of what has been reported in the media about these events. Some of the stories don’t seem to be connected to the theme of the book, but they make for good reading all the same.
It would have been easy for me to put this book down once the flavour of the theme became too strong. As a man, surrounded by strong women who I admire, it is slightly off-putting to be made to feel like part of the problem. After all I am a white male, so just like all the others perceived to be controlling football, and I’m sure I’d be capable of some of the mistakes outlined in the book. At no point is it uncomfortable though, and the author does acknowledge that we can go too far the other way with the quip : “Sometimes I do think we need to calm down, and not make mountains out of molehills.” I mean, if you’re watching a men’s game and the commentator tells you that the goal scorer has just become the leading scorer for their country, you’re probably going to assume it’s for the men’s team, aren’t you?
There were a couple of odd moments – “chatting with a male friend in Nyon in October 2022”, we go on to hear about his lack of knowledge of the women’s game but his intimate knowledge of female tennis players. Somewhere earlier in the book we have the same story (I have the paperback not the eBook so I can’t easily search) and there are also two parts that repeat regarding 1921 and the banning of women’s football from top-flight stadiums in the UK. Either that, or I had read something in between the very few sittings I took to consume the book. It doesn’t detract from the excellent writing though, and the editing is tight. I only one noticed one minor mistake and that’s probably because I proof read a lot these days.
Overall, this was a very entertaining read. What I thought was going to be high and mighty condemnation of sexist male behaviour in football was more of a call to arms for everyone to do better, and for everyone to have a think before they act. Sure, we all like an anecdote of a Scottish “period dignity officer” and the use of models instead of players for the Irish women’s rugby kit launch, and this keeps it punchy. But the underlying message that football, as well as society in general, must do better when it comes to equality, is welcome and remarkably fresh.
Have a read. Sally Freedman’s life in football would be the envy of thousands of people, men and women alike, and she is not afraid to tell it how it really is. Congratulations on the book, and I hope that anyone seeing the title will be tempted to read it. I have, after all, been in crowds at games in the 1980s that sang that very song.
