ABSTRACT
The papers (remember them?) are full of comment about the latest major international competition. It is rarely otherwise. We are always either preparing for, attempting to qualify for, competing in, or coming to terms with, and trying to account for our failure in, one tournament or the other. ‘The other’? Yes, for the national team, the nation’s team, is of course the football team. It is also, naturally, male. This is not to deny that there may well be other sports that ‘we’ compete in, nor that females play football, but let us not be sidetracked by such eccentricities.
