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Laura Williamson: Women need to shout from the rooftops if footballers are to be rewarded

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A 23-year-old England international said publicly this week the team were not being paid enough money to play football.

This may not seem unusual in the current climate but I’m not talking about Theo Walcott and his apparently never-ending contract saga at Arsenal.

The player in question was Sophie Bradley, the Lincoln Ladies, Great Britain and England defender. Yes, a woman.

Vocal: Bradley (centre) has publicly said that England's top women are not being paid enough

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In an interview with BBC Sport, Bradley said, quite calmly, that England’s centrally contracted players need to be better rewarded, not only for the job they do on the pitch but for their role in the ‘progression of the game’.

They earned £16,000 a year in 2012 and have called in the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) because they are unhappy with the £2,000 increase on offer from the FA, a figure PFA chief Gordon Taylor called ‘embarrassing’.

There are also wrangles about the 24 hours a week players are allowed to supplement their income with a second job.

Bradley, for example, works in her parents’ care home alongside training twice a day, six times a week in the build-up to the new season in March. England captain Casey Stoney reached the age of 30 before she did not have to rely ‘consistently’ on her overdraft.

Compare the FA’s offer with the £20,804 an athlete who has achieved a top-eight finish at world or Olympic level would receive through UK Sport’s World Class Performance Programme and you see Bradley and her team-mates have a valid point.

Of course they do. How can your training be effective if you have to work in an old people’s home when you should be resting? It’s utter nonsense.

Yet even more pertinent is that Bradley has decided to speak up and fight her corner. Note that her comments did not come via an agent or through an anonymous ‘club spokesperson’. She is not whingeing, moaning, asking for millions of pounds or inviting comparison with the wages earned by the men. She just wants to feel valued. 

This is an important moment not only in the women’s game but for sportswomen generally. The ‘ever so humble’ and ‘we’re just glad to be here’ act belongs to another era.

Crowd scene: More than 70,000 people watched Great Britain's women beat Brazil during the Olympics

WHAT THEY SAID

Toni Minichiello, Jess Ennis’s coach, after hearing Don Valley Stadium could be bulldozed to save Sheffield council £700,000 a year.

‘Not much legacy in a pile of rubble, is there? Can’t inspire  all that many kids by showing  them a demolition site, can you?’

Just five months ago there were calls to rename the stadium after  Ennis, Sheffield’s golden girl.

The England women’s cricket team flew economy to Sri Lanka for the Twenty20 World Cup last year while the men’s side turned left when they got on the plane. The women also received a much lower daily living allowance, yet bowler Holly Colvin said ‘everyone was happy’ with their lot.

I do hope this was just an agreed party line to keep attention focused on events on the pitch, because it was crushingly disappointing to hear at the time.

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard female athletes shrug their shoulders after yet another snub and say: ‘I’m not in it for the money. I’d probably still do it for free.’ It drives me insane. They may as well have ‘doormat’ written on their foreheads.

Winner: Steph Houghton scored the only goal as Great Britain beat Brazil 1-0 at Wembley

Nobody is suggesting they are motivated by money (let’s face it, you can’t be, given the  relatively meagre rewards for female athletes), but you need a certain amount of cash just to compete in your sport and even more to do it well. It is no coincidence that the best-funded teams and athletes tend to achieve the most.

If women’s football is to capitalise on the attention it generated during the Olympic Games it needs to act now by instilling a greater level of professionalism from the very top of the game.

But it is still an important step forward that we’re even having the conversation.

  AND THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING THIS WEEK

At Goodison Park to meet Everton and England midfielder Jill Scott, a new columnist for Mail Online. The corridors lined with pictures emanated history and tradition. It’s a proper football ground - not a soulless stadium - in every way.

Saw my first gold postbox in Marlow, Bucks, which honours Paralympic rower Naomi Riches’ success in the mixed coxed four. The locals, however, were significantly less impressed. ‘It still works the same, you know,’ said one bloke.

Naomi Riches (second left) has a gold postbox in Marlow in honour of her Paralympic gold medal

Guilty of jumping on the new year fitness regime bandwagon, along with the rest of the UK. I’m still, however, recovering from my first class with an instructor called Sphinx wearing an all-in-one Lycra suit adorned with the Union flag.

PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK

Laura Robson breaking into the top 50 in the tennis rankings, where she joins Heather Watson.

It is the first time since 1987 that two British women have achieved this concurrently.

When you consider Robson was born in 1994 and Watson only two years earlier, this feels like a  landmark moment.

  More... Plot to demolish stadium Olympics star Ennis trained in seen as betrayal of promises made as London won the Games Swim stars Adlington and Louganis dive in to back Daley in TV row





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