This is what you endure watching England as a woman

I made my way downstairs to the hotel lobby and there were plenty of England fans checking in, carrying crates of ale and planning their evenings accordingly. As I turned out onto the main street which leads towards our office I spotted a group of men in their mid-20s wearing England shirts and walking towards three young women. This was the moment I realised the day was going to be a lot different than the one I had hoped for.

As the women got closer one of the men heckled: “You’ve got a pair of legs on yer, you!” His friends met his catcalling with the acceptance of laughter as each of them sipped at their open cans. One of the other men shouted: “Tell him to fuck off, if you want.” The man who made the original comment retorted: “She won’t do that. She loves it.”

The woman being targeted continued in her stride, ignoring the situation. She linked the arms of her two friends and the three of them disappeared down a side street.

This woman did not love it. Her friends did not love it. I did not love it.

Working in London for the majority of Euro 2020 was an incredible privilege. The football was great, and I took in the sounds and sights of one of the most wondrous cities in the world. However, there is one thing that ruins it, and it is the unacceptable behaviour of some male England fans and their archaic and intimidating attitudes towards women. 

We need to talk about it.

Looking out of my hotel room window on Sunday morning I had struggled to gauge the energy and excitement of the city. Once I stepped out of the hotel and headed towards Wembley, I knew seeing the abuse of those three girls was simply a sign of things to come.

I made my own way past the men with my face covering on and my head down hoping to get by without comment. The kind of walk is one every woman has made at least once in their life. It is the kind of walk I did a lot during the last month. It’s intimidating, even if it’s not immediately obvious to everyone why. The saddest thing about this experience is I knew it wouldn’t be the last we were to witness that day.

I knew this because over the past month I had come to the realisation that there is a small minority of male England fans who do not know how to treat women with respect. On Sunday the most troubling thing for me was that at times it felt more like a majority.

Do you want to know why I was scared walking through the crowd of England fans? I was scared I was going to get touched or grabbed inappropriately. Just as verbal abuse will ring in your ears — once somebody has fondled you, you never quite forget what that unwanted transfer of energy feels like.

Every woman knows the unwritten rules of how to protect yourself when you are alone. Leave before it gets dark, hold your keys between your knuckles, sit on the outside seat on a bus so you can’t get trapped, share your live location during a taxi ride, call and text people while you walk and again when you get home. These are just some of the daily hoops women must jump through in order to keep themselves safe. Getting that same adrenaline rush of fear I get when walking alone at night should not happen on Wembley Way in daylight on such a momentous occasion.

Being on the London Underground was constantly uncomfortable. It seemed the confined space would increase the chances of sexism, misogyny and threat towards women. Heading to and from Wembley Park on the Bakerloo line had become a stressful pilgrimage for me and no doubt many others.

On the way to the stadium there was a group of male England supporters aged from their early 20s to late 40s. They had gathered around a group of Danish couples and kept on chanting “You’re shit but your birds are fit!” I really wanted to tell them to shut up but the fear of being targeted constantly found a way to override my own moral compass. I wanted to speak out — and have done in the past — but the environment felt too hostile to raise my voice. Throughout the tournament, my own courage in these situations seemed to wane. 

Getting off the train always felt like a massive relief. On Sunday, walking out of the station, the potential was there for a really enjoyable atmosphere. There were more fans than we had encountered so far in the tournament and they were all singing loudly together. There was tangible hope in their voices that football was “coming home again”. You could feel that.

As soon as we hit Wembley Way it became immediately clear to me this was not going to be a fun day out, and the next couple of hours were one of the most stressful experiences I have endured outside a football stadium. It was complete chaos. I have never ever felt so consistently under threat and deeply intimidated by so many people. The path to Wembley felt more like a war zone than a fan zone.

We witnessed a glass bottle fly inches past a little girl’s head. Will that little girl ever want to go back to a football match? If it had hit her would she have been able to? Will her parents feel comfortable taking her to another game? We are trying to inspire girls and women to play football, to attend football matches, to work in football but a day like this could have easily put anyone off our sport for life. And that makes me so angry.

Is there anything more we can be doing to help women and children feel safer at games? That’s a question I am not entirely sure I know the answer to because the problem is at the feet of these fans, the ones who make people like me and others feel this dread and hostility. 

With Wembley Way impossible to navigate through without feeling like you were going to get hit by a stray can or grabbed by a drunken man, my colleague and I decided to take one of the back streets up towards the stadium to avoid the missiles, chaotic energy and all-round intimidatory vibe.

The back street had fewer fans, but plenty of men were now exploiting the quietness to use the street as a giant bathroom. A lot of men were exposing themselves to passers-by without a care in the world. One man who exposed himself to a female fan asked her “Is that a good length for you?” The woman, who was with her partner, ignored the man as he continued to shout vile things.

 

Wembley Way was a sea of litter (Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

Women don’t want to stand out from the crowd, we want to belong to it and many of those England fans made that impossible at the weekend. I am sure most women who were in attendance around the stadium on Sunday have at least one story to tell, yet these stories and experiences were just part of the match-day experience. Indecent exposure, unwanted groping, abusive language and any disrespectful or violent behaviour of any kind towards women being as increasingly common as it was on Sunday does not justify its place in the sport or the country.

There’s always an uneasiness we feel making our way past the men’s toilet queue. If walking through the crowd wasn’t bad enough imagine a long line of men glaring at you and the odd one making an obscene comment or gesture. Nobody should ever make you want to feel invisible.

Do the men who have treated women in this way over the course of the past month want their own female family members to go through these kinds of experiences? No? Then why do they keep on targeting other people’s daughters?

The same goes for the group of England fans heckling a woman who was on her balcony overlooking the stadium. They sang “Get your tits out for the lads” on repeat until she disappeared back into her home. 

Earlier in the tournament, a former England player was being interviewed outside the stadium and there was a man shouting “I shagged your niece” at him. This is not OK. None of this is OK.

There has been such a concerted effort to inspire women and girls to play football, to attend matches, to work in the game in recent years. Inspiration is all well and good, but what is actually being done about the practicalities of the environment in which professional male football operates in this country? If this experience is the norm, it’s not fit for purpose.

Football seems to empower and embolden huge groups of England fans in the wrong kind of way. Which does make me wonder if this is an England-specific problem given the friendly and welcoming atmosphere around the stadium to the Italy vs Spain semi-final where I felt completely safe at all times.

A lot of what happened on Sunday and throughout the tournament was negatively impacted by the intake of alcohol and drugs. The excessive drinking and drug-taking culture which follows football around was out of hand at the weekend. 

 

People make their way through the streets of London after the Euro 2020 final (Photo: Dave Rushen/Getty Images)

This reminds me of the first night I spent in London at the very start of the tournament. It was a late finish and I had knelt down to fix my shoelace as a drunk man walked by. He saw me do this and looped back around. He got close to me and I immediately felt uncomfortable in his presence. Luckily, a woman who was staying in our hotel saw all this play out. Seeing the fear on my face she asked if I was OK and if I wanted to accompany her back into the hotel reception. If not for the care of this incredible woman, Kate Lucey, I do wonder how different that situation could have been.

We are yet to even discuss the outpouring of support networks that cropped up on Sunday evening. Women in London and across the country took to social media to open up their homes to any females who were in fear of being subjected to domestic violence after the game.

Domestic violence abuse is reported to have risen by 38 per cent after England lost the Euro 2020 final. It goes up by 28 per cent just when England play. What is going on? We need to feel appalled and ashamed. But most of all we need to prevent domestic violence, we need to stop it from happening.

I made my way back to the office to watch the match. On the tube, a man told a woman, who was on her own, “You make me horny”. He was standing in her way and she had to go around him to get off the train. 

Then a large group of young men boarded the train, jumping up and down and creating a crush. This was probably the scariest part of the day. I and another woman next to me were helpless. A young woman and her partner were visibly shaken by this before managing to force their way off the train.

What I have witnessed in the past month has made me question why anyone would want to take their children to football matches, particularly England ones. 

I didn’t feel safe on Sunday. I didn’t feel at home. I felt close to abuse, close to harm and I am not alone in that.

The day and month was filled with so many instances like this. We must continue to call out this behaviour and I hope my words here are helping to do so. To do what I did not have the courage to do on Sunday, stand up and say this is not OK.

Sunday should have been a celebration but it was far from that. So far from that. I thought Ryan Conway and I could end the tournament by writing a joint article on what it was like being in the city at such a special time. Instead, he has written about the racist abuse targeted at Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka and here I am addressing sexism.