FORMER Ireland international and RTÉ pundit Karen Duggan spoke about the exciting times ahead for women’s football and its exponential growth.
During the RTÉ coverage of the lead-up to Iceland’s clash with Finland – the opening match of the 2025 UEFA Women’s Euros – Duggan claimed ‘tokenism’ had left women’s football.
The player/pundit has amassed 35 senior caps for the Republic of Ireland[/caption]
Duggan has played in the Women’s Premier Division for 14 years and has seen the game come on leaps and bounds at first hand.
The Kilkenny native said: “The trajectory of women’s football seems like there’s no comparison really to any other sport at the moment. It’s been amazing I think a lot of it has to do with exposure.
“I think the talent has always been there but now there’s opportunities to play professionally and it’s bringing it to a new level.
“Exposure is huge and I think the fact that all of these games are being put out in front of young girls and more people are seeing what they can do.
“The ‘see it to believe it’ thing is definitely true but it’s not just that. I think it is down to so many things that the game growing so so much.
2023 saw a record 46.7 million people in the UK watched women’s sport on television with women’s football playing a huge role in that figure.
The total for 2023 was one million higher than the previous best in 2019. Football made up 74 per cent of the women’s sport viewing hours.
Duggan added: “We’ve seen the development of the WSL I think has been huge. I think a huge factor around this that I’m really excited by is coming into this tournament its not about all tokenism.
“Theres no ‘how are Switzerland going to develop,’ the conversation is very much focused on the football.
“I think the growth since the Euros that England won has been very very organic and I think that that’s the most positive thing, I feel like the tokenism is gone now.”
The year Duggan made her Peamount debut in 2011, the average Women’s Super League attendance for the season was just 550.
The season average attendance rose to a high of 3,072 in 2019/20 before England’s 2022 Euros win.
Since the national team’s success the season average attendance rose to 5,272 the following season and rose again to 7,363 the year after.
The record WSL attendance has also been broken on four separate occasions since the famous Euro 2022.
