An Exercise In Logic?

Only 20% of women in the UK take enough exercise to benefit their health. So says the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation, in a call for a public debate on how to persuade more women to take exercise.

Women, apparently, are put off taking exercise by their experience of sport in school (that, I can thoroughly understand!), and "need much better rôle models than the wives and girlfriends of football stars". Well, till shopping joins the ranks of the Olympic sports, they've probably got that right, too.

The perfect rôle models to encourage women to take part in sports and to take up the fitness training that demands, you might imagine, would be the female soccer stars who recently took part in the World Cup. It was held in China just a few weeks ago, and the English team deservedly reached the last 8.

What a pity, then, that it's also been announced this morning that for each day they were involved in the competition, each member of the team has been paid... £40.

That's less than $80 - and it means that the team's fitness level's dropping fast.

Instead of doing their usual amount of training, the women are spending extra time at work, trying to make up their lost earnings.

The governing body of women's soccer, the Football Association, says that investment in the women's game has never been higher. Maybe so - but high enough to attract women into a sport that demands healthy eating, a lot of dedication, a vast amount of time spent training, a lot of traveling and some serious hard work both on and off the pitch?

I don't think so. In fact, if it effectively involves them in financial penalties as well, any potential gains in raising the profile of the sport are probably already lost.

Maybe someone should be looking at some ways to attract far-sighted sponsors who can see the health and the commercial benefits of women's soccer, or maybe the Football Association could look at the amounts of money "earned" by Premiership clubs and players - some of whom occasionally claim to be "too tired" to play - and make sure that the funding they're responsible for is fairly allocated.

Maybe it's something that the Government's Minister for Sport might like to take a look at. After all, no-one's asking for a fortune to be spent on women's football - just to make sure the women who take part in it aren't actually penalized for their success.

Perhaps the first thing that needs exercising is some common sense.