Irish Examiner View: Shiels’ outburst a backwards step for women in sport

The dodgy conclusions of the Northern Ireland women’s soccer team manager about the female psyche shows just how far women’s sports have still to travel.

Northern Ireland manager Kenny Shiels' post-match comments caused controversy this week. Picture: Liam McBurney/PA Wire.

Just as professional women’s sports are gaining huge popularity, media traction, financial support, and long overdue credibility, one man’s Neanderthal views have nearly put the kibosh on a wonderful new field of sporting endeavour.

Kenny Shiels, manager of the Northern Ireland women’s soccer team, following an upsetting 5-0 home loss to England this week in a World Cup qualifier (which drew the biggest ever crowd for a women’s soccer international in Belfast), said his side’s concession of four quick second-half goals showed that “women are more emotional than men”.

Shiels has since apologised profusely for his intemperate remarks — and rightly so — but his opinions illustrate just how far women’s sports still have to travel in what was previously a hideously all-male environment.

Top-level female sports now have not simply a toehold on the public consciousness; in recent years, female soccer players, rugby players, and boxers have grabbed the paying public by the throat in what is only the start of an era in which the idea that only men can provide the thrills sports fans demand is vividly redundant. 

Of course, women have for years competed — and have been paid commensurately — in top-level tennis, athletics, and other sports, but the emergence of top-line women performers in previously male-only sporting bastions has been as revelatory as it is welcome.

Unfortunately, there are still those who cannot help themselves when it comes to obnoxious and ill-considered remarks about the abilities of our growing band of female heroes. 

In Shiels’ case, it would have been a lot more simple to admit his team were beaten by a better side, rather than drawing dodgy conclusions about the female psyche.