Niamh Horan attracts a lot of interest for her writing in the Sunday Independent. Most of it is what would be referred to as trolling with condemnation raining from on high about how shallow / stereotypical / puerile many of her articles are.
Some of it is deserved, some of it an overreaction. The reason why she features on Sport for Business today is because of an article she wrote on the growth of Irish Women’s Rugby this weekend.
It has come at a time when the national side stand on the brink of a level of glory rarely if ever achieved by any Irish team. They have done so not as a women’s team but as a sports team that happen’s to be made up of women.
Women first, sport second
Horan’s account of an evening with the Railway Union Women’s Rugby team failed because it focused on them being women first and sports players a distant second. Some of the sexual innuendo in the opening paragraphs would have been spiked by an editor in the 1970’s never mind our more enlightened times now, regardless whether it was written by a Niall rather than a Niamh.
And yet, in order for sport to become ‘normalised’ for women, it has to go through some rough patches of journalism as well. Writing in the Irish Times today Malachy Clerkin writes about how complicated it is trying to steer a path through coverage of Women’s sport. He points out to those who see no sexism and those who see it in every word.
The reality is that in the second half of her column she did talk about coach John Cronin and his assertion that the women players on the team were more inquisitive, curious and eager to learn.
Social side to sport
And about the fact that there was a social side to sport that people know but rarely stoop to talk about. Sport is a social medium. We come together as groups of strangers and grow as groups of friends. If Niamh Horan’s article persuaded a dozen young women that sport can be fun and friendly, and not for all about the huge commitment it takes to get to a World Cup semi final, then perhaps it’s not such a bad thing after all.
In an ideal world the article would not have had references to ‘a blonde’s hand slipping around my thigh’ and certainly wouldn’t have run under a headline of ‘I never play a game without my tan.’ That was cheap and irrelevant. But is Women’s sport better or worse because of the article?
My favourite tweet of the sporting weekend was a comment made my Emma Jayne Wilson a Canadian Jockey riding at Ascot on Saturday. Just before jumping on a transatlantic plane to ride that night in Toronto she was asked about a stunning day of riding and reflected that “I’m not a female jockey, I’m just a jockey.”
Normal in all its glory
That’s where Women’s sport needs to get to, and will. When we look on it as sport, through the achievements of a Serena Williams or a Jessica Ennis, and it not being a curiosity, that’s when it will be normal, in all it’s glory and good.
We need to make it as comfortable for a 16 year old girl to play sport as her 16 year old boyfriend or twin brother. In getting to that point there will be bumps along the way but success is never just measured by victory. It is more important how you deal with the setbacks and use them to get better.
Let’s see how many players leave and or join Railway Union Rugby Club as a result, in part, of Sunday’s article and look back from a distance before we fully judge it’s offensiveness or effectiveness.
