Get your kit off

After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they are lesbians, the BBC ran its first ever Nike ad. At least that’s what I thought initially: rap music, moody shots of athletes, very high production values. Then I saw they were all grim-faced women and the word ‘RISE’ in flames and I thought: ‘Big new drama series? About girls who’ve been sucked into this very strict Christian cult, a bit like the Handmaid’s Tale, maybe?’ Then I noticed they were all wearing football kit and kicking balls around, and went back to my original Nike idea. Finally came the big reveal. It said: ‘#CHANGE THE GAME. FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP 2019.’

If you go to the BBC website, you’ll see a feature headlined ‘Women’s World Cup: 10 things about the BBC trailer’. But it doesn’t contain the one fact that might conceivably have been interesting about this monumental waste of licence-fee payer’s money: exactly how much the BBC spunked up against the wall on this orgy of virtue-signalling, identity politics and third-rate sport.

I don’t mean to be uncharitable here — no wait, I do. But let’s put this pretend ‘world cup’, which will be sold to us as if it were the real world cup, in perspective. In 2016, the Australian women’s national team — then ranked fifth in the world — were beaten 7–0 by the Newcastle Jets under-15 boys. In 2017, the USA suffered a similar fate — 5–2 down — against FC Dallas’s U15 boys. Last month, Chelsea — for the semi-finals of the Women’s Champion’s League — drew crowds of 4,670. The reason people don’t want to watch women’s football is not that they need the BBC’s wise guidance to liberate them from their unconscious sexism.