Scotland captain Rachel Corsie has added to the war of words between the women’s side and the Scottish Football Association, suggesting there’s inequality in how the association treats its national teams.
A divide between the team and the governing body became apparent when Scotland stars took to social media in what looked to be an organised protest about how they thought the SFA were promoting the World Cup qualifier against Spain.
Tweets from high-profile players questioned why tickets for only a few sections of Hampden Park were being made available.
The Scottish FA responded with a statement claiming the team had misunderstood how ticket sales worked, and said that they had been actively promoting the match. The association then claimed that staff had been hurt by the criticism, which could have remained private “without negative headlines and ill-informed sharing”.
Facing the media at an event to promote the match, Corsie said there was a clear feeling that more needed to be done to grow the women’s game in Scotland but said there had been inequality in the past and implied that it continued in some form today.
Asked directly if she felt that the women’s game was being treated as equal to the men’s, the Scotland captain said: “I think equality is always something that is going to need to be pushed all the time, especially for the women’s game, to have the chance to catch up.
“And it may never catch up. You know, the men’s game has such a huge start and has built a foundation.
“There’s history. And I don’t think it’s necessarily about catching up either.
“I think there has been things in the past that we’ve highlighted that showed that there hasn’t always been equality across the board.”
Pressed on the team’s frustrations and why they perhaps felt they weren’t valued, Corsie said some circumstances led players to feel “less important than others” within the Scottish FA.
“I think a portion of that comes down to the fact we know that there’s times when the resources aren’t provided to the best level, or that we know what is viewed as a high performing level in comparison to what either club environments are, or other national teams are given and other teams in the association are given aren’t equal to what we get,” he said.
“I think when you become aware of that, quite naturally that makes you feel that you’re less important than others.”
The defender, who has 130 international caps, had earlier explained the thinking behind the organised tweets, saying that the players wanted everyone to know they were playing at the national stadium and to have the opportunity to support them in their World Cup qualifier.
“We want everybody to be there who wants to be there,” she said.
“We know that we have a fantastic support and we know that people do support us, even the people who can’t make it to match days.
“And that ultimately was the initial part of some of the discussions that we had as a collective group.
“The second part just came from the fact that I think, as you can see, there was some limited availability and I think off the back of just everything that’s happening around the game, whether that’s other national teams, and, you know, there’s a number of national teams breaking record after record for selling out stadiums.
“We’ve seen that recently with club football. It’s constantly growing.
“We just want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to know that the game is on, for it to be visible, to know that there’s an opportunity to come to the game, to know that we’re playing at Hampden on Tuesday night.”
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