Pat_Mustard
I'm so gorgeous they want to put me under arrest!
I agree, and on a personal level I'm delighted for the girl that she's allowed to continue her career. I get that football is a contact sport, but it's not like boxing or MMA where there's some clear, obvious physical danger with allowing women to test the waters and see what level they can reach.I can't see why it would be a problem a priori. If a woman can make it at a higher level, it remains to be seen. But they should be allowed to try.
It's something that will require monitoring in fairness, and I don't think it's fair to completely dismiss the difficulties that will arise for referees in particular as, for example, teammates and fans acclimatise to seeing their waif-like female forward getting cleaned out in a tackle by some huge, hairy-arsed opposition centre-back. Agreed that it absolutely doesn't justify halting this experiment, and I completely agree that people tend to massively underestimate what females are capable of athletically.Sounds like a really positive step. It is highly likely that 99% of women footballers can't play at the standard required, but it's ridiculous to think that there is not one woman who has the physical attributes to play professionally, and gender rules should not hold that person back. Women can sprint 11 second 100ms and run marathons in 2 and a bit hours, they can play a game of football.
The stuff about 'oh men will worry about tackling her' - that's their problem and no-one elses.
That's a 59kg (9 and a bit stone) woman chucking a 140kg (nearly 22 stone) barbell over her head and making it look easy. I know that I'm 13 stone, have lifted weights recreationally for around 2 decades on and off, and have never came remotely close to lifting that sort of weight overhead, and I'm sure most of the members of this forum haven't either. Obviously she's the best female in the world in her discipline at that weight class, and there's many males at a similar weight that can equal or better her performance, but she's clearly miles above the typical human being at her weight, male or female, and there's obviously certain national or more commonly regional-level competitions that she'd win. There's clearly some level where elite females can compete against non-elite males in sport, and I see no reason to deny them the opportunity to try it out in sports where safety concerns don't make it too dangerous.