[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Have any of you changed your opinion on women's football?

Yes, in the same sense that I changed my opinion of Tom Hanks's acting between Turner & Hooch and Saving Private Ryan... because in that time he became a better actor!

Seriously, I first paid proper attention to women's footy during the 2012 Olympics, and watched all of the 2015 World Cup, and even across those seven years I've seen the quality and standards get markedly better. The major factors in this, to my mind, are a) more players becoming professional and devoting themselves full-time to the sport, b) quality of opposition improving across the board, and c) increased interest providing a wider pool of young players and experienced coaches to guide them. And all three of those factors are down to televised coverage - not necessarily front-and-centre of the schedules, but at least *available* - for which the BBC in particular deserve praise. I remember some otherwise sensible sports journos in autumn 2012 rolling their eyes at the Beeb showing England Women friendlies on red button, giving it all the "political correctness gone mad" and "let's not get carried away with this silly fad", and if they've got any honesty or integrity, they should hang their heads and admit they were wrong.

When it comes to comparisons between the men's and women's games, the fact is that if you prize power, speed and stamina in sport, it's always going to be the top-level men who are the foremost exponents. However, certainly in football and cricket (the two sports in which I regularly watch women compete), there are enough elements of intelligence, creativity and other attributes not biologically enhanced by testosterone for the game to be enjoyable in a way that bears favourable comparison between sexes. Naturally, it's always in the back of my mind when watching the women that I'm not going to see anything on a par with Jos Buttler smacking a ball into orbit with a flick of his wrists or Jofra Archer beheading someone with a 90mph bouncer, but then, the qualities that we admire in any given sport do have a tendency to evolve over time. Your average Victorian would be horrified by the sight of one-touch passing in football (back then they believed that dribbling the ball past an opponent was the greatest of skills, and passing was weak and cowardly) or the number of LBWs in cricket (because "pad-play" was perfectly gentlemanly). There's no reason why, over time, we can't learn to appreciate different things that the women's game potentially makes more prominent.