They used to be places that reeked of testosterone, sweat and male egos, their floors sticky with lager spilled by big boys with big biceps. Well, that’s all changing. As the Women’s Rugby World Cup powers through its early stages, the latest spin-off from the rise and rise of women’s sport is women’s sports bars.
As such innovations tend to, this one started in America when, according to the Economist, a former chef called Jenny Nguyen opened the Sports Bra (ho ho!) in Portland, Oregon in 2022. She did so after having to watch a top women’s basketball match in a traditional sports bar with the sound on mute, presumably so as not to compete with the small talk of the male customers not interested in what was happening on TV.
Jenny had difficulty persuading investors to back her idea and in the end used her own savings to get it going. It was pretty much an instant success. It brought in nearly $1 million in its first few months, quickly attracted female sports celebrities and prides itself on being a ‘temple to women’s sport’. Now we’re catching up in the UK too, with Set Piece Social in Shoreditch, east London, just one example. This says it’s tearing down the concept of a ‘traditional sports bar’. Good luck to it.
One difficulty with this World Cup was always going to be the disparity between the best – England, Canada, New Zealand and France – and the rest. Jeopardy is out the door, and here are some scorelines from the first few matches: 73-0, 69-7, 65-7, 66-6, and 54-8. Still, as the match-ups get closer, the rugby can be breathtaking, and the thrilling 2021 final – when New Zealand beat England 34-31 – was one of the best games of that year.
Meanwhile, the women’s game can certainly teach the men’s a thing or two about publicity: the coverage has been uniformly warm and you don’t often see a fly-half on the cover of a prominent style magazine, as England’s Holly Aitchison recently was, in a bikini and with a rugby ball.
As such innovations tend to, this one started in America with the Sports Bra (ho ho!) in Portland, Oregon
The benefits of expanding rugby’s standard membership are vividly revealed on the other side of the world where a terrific Rugby Championship – the best tournament in the world, in my view – is slowly unspooling. Who among those sneering at the Wallabies’ right to play the Lions, and there were plenty, would have expected Australia to beat the Springboks, reasonably comfortably, coming back from 22-0 down to win 38-22 in Johannesburg, and to have come mighty close in Cape Town? It makes Australia’s woeful performance in the first Lions Test totally baffling. But the result to cheer the most jaded heart came in Buenos Aires, where the Pumas, for so long barely acknowledged on rugby’s top table, handsomely defeated the All Blacks, their first victory over New Zealand on home soil. Let’s have more, please.
It’s just a football highlights show, Match of the Day, but it seems to arouse a preposterous amount of passion. Since being forcibly recast following Gary Lineker’s decision to spend more time with his crisps, the programme had a pleasant enough relaunch with the battered ‘Blimey, is that the time?’ charm of Mark Chapman, and the high-wattage brilliance of Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan.
And how cool was it to run through the weekend’s other fixtures – Bournemouth vs Wolves and similar classics – with a backing-track banger from the queen of lesbian rock, the great Chappell Roan? That was ‘Hot To Go!’, and if you can get it out of your head, you’re a better person than I.
So, good for MOTD. No weekend is complete without it, whatever you might think of Wayne Rooney’s tactical acumen.
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