We’re Cheering England in the Football!

Are you watching the UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 Finals? We are – all the games are on Eurosport so we’ve been watching a LOT of football.

scoring a goal in football

England are on a roll – we won all the matches in the group stage (which was pretty tense at times) setting up a Quarter Final with France.

Women’s Football is still a funny old game though.

This last week The FA launched a campaign with Disney, asking the England Women’s players which Disney Princess they identified with the most. Alas, they didn’t also ask the England Men which character they identified with too…

We recently bought an Amazon Echo which has been brilliant for a lot of things. We’ve been asking Alexa what the football scores are (when a game has been too good and we don’t want to flick between channels in case we miss a goal) and she hasn’t been able to answer. I flagged this, and received this as a reply from Amazon.

Hello,

I understand that Alexa is providing the sports update for men’s football but not for the women’s football scores.

I’ve checked our records and I’d like to let you know that, Currently Alexa doesn’t support women’s football sports update as this feature is not available on Alexa.

As this is a newly launched device in UK, there are few features which need to be added. However, we are constantly working to add more features to the device at the earliest possible. I’ve forwarded your message to our Amazon Echo development team for consideration as we make further improvements.

I’m sure that they’ll carefully look into this and take necessary actions in the nearest future. I’d like to thank you for bringing this into our notice and please be assured that we’ll try to bring this option to the earliest.

Let’s hope so, eh?

Friday night @paniniukofficial sticker time #weuro2017 #paninistickers

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Meanwhile, in the neverending quest to fill H’s Euro 2017 Panini Sticker Book, shops are running out of stickers. This must mean they’ve been really popular – I’ve seen the starter kits at our local WH Smiths, they don’t stock the refills though. So far I’ve seen them in WH Smiths and Sainsburys, and that’s all. Things are getting better. Slowly.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an England Football Lottie doll? H has several, including the football kit – Brownie Lottie and Football Lottie watched the match together, apparently.

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H now has a subscription to She Kicks magazine – she’ll get a copy every month, and we’re loving the current Euro 2017 edition. If you want information about the Women’s game, then She Kicks is the place to go. In fact, it’s the only place to go – and it’s a great place to go.

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I had a conversation with one of our football-mad Brownies a couple of weeks ago. “Are you looking forward to the Women’s Euros?” I asked. “Oh, I don’t follow Women’s Football” she replied. I pointed out she was such a good footballer what if she ended up being a future Lioness… I think this is the problem with the women’s game. The funding of things like the SSE Wildcats groups needs to continue. Keep making football affordable and fun. Awareness is getting out there, make more clubs available for girls to attend.

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Accept that girls will like the men’s game as much as the women’s game, and make sure information about the women’s game is available. Get England Women playing at Wembley again. I realise this is difficult due to Tottenham playing there this season, but in the last three years they’ve played there once – opting for games in stadiums around the country for friendlies instead.

McDonalds sponsor a lot of Grassroots football. When England do well, get players on adverts on tv – you know, like they do with other sportsmen and women. Let’s have players getting equal billing alongside the men so people stop saying “who’s that?” and know exactly who they’re watching.

Things are getting better – having Little Mix do their Euro 2017 Salute campaign was brilliant! Even if half the girls at Wildcats weren’t keen on Little Mix they were happy to do a salute for England!

H doing her #salute for England’s #lionesses #weuro2017 #wecanplay

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Most SSE Wildcats sessions are coming to an end now, and we’ve found out Crystal Palace will continue. Our sessions have moved up in price from £1 a week to £3 which is still affordable. As well as this you can select which weeks you want to go.  We’ve decided to stick with Wildcats as despite our local club offering free sessions for girls, I feel like H is progressing better alongside other girls right now. That may change in the future but for now it’s what works best for us and we’re lucky to have the choice.

Assuming that England qualify for the 2019 World Cup in France, we’re definitely going. Definitely.

Just yesterday it was announced that Arsenal Ladies were going to be known as just Arsenal. The only time their gender will come into it is when it needs to. This is awesome news and I hope more clubs follow.

Of course, it also goes without saying, boys like women’s football too. Don’t shut them out while trying to encourage girls to play….

UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 Finals Panini Sticker Book

UEFA Womens Euro 2017 Panini Sticker Book
Rejoice, rejoice! Panini have brought out a UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 Finals sticker book! It’s out now, available in stores.

Panini have brought out the first ever UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 Finals sticker book – and it’s available now! This is a REALLY big deal, as it has never happened before.

Back in the 80s I used to subscribe to Shoot! magazine – a football magazine famous for its League Ladders and facts about footballers across all clubs. My favourite week was always the one that featured the Tottenham team, obviously. But you had to wait…

My other favourite week was getting a free Football League Panini Stickers album – plus a few stickers to start you off. I’d spend my pocket money on Jukebox 7″ singles at our local supermarket alongside several packs of Panini stickers to complete my collection.

H is now at the age where she gets enough pocket money she knows to save it up to spend it on something she really wants. When I spotted that Panini have launched a UEFA Women’s Euro finals sticker book I had to buy it as a treat – start ’em young, right?

UEFA Womens Euro 2017 Panini Sticker Book Norway team and badge

The sticker book covers all clubs from the forthcoming European finals, plus has a team badge and full team photo on each page. I found a book in Sainsbury’s. The book contains six stickers inside plus a couple of packs. I bought six more packs, you can never have too many.

UEFA Womens Euro 2017 Panini Sticker Book starter pack

The collection consists of a 40 page album with 334 stickers to collect. There are 22 special stickers to look out for too. The starter set costs £2.99 and consists of the book and 24 stickers to start you off. Each pack of stickers is 60p for five. Panini also offer you the option to order up any spaces online. That means no more having to save the backs of your old stickers before ordering.

UEFA Womens Euro 2017 Panini Sticker Book switzerland page

There are familiar names from the 2014 World Cup alongside players we’ll get to learn about. There are familiar names from the games we’ve seen, predominantly the England Lionesses of course, but also some Dutch players.

UEFA Womens Euro 2017 Panini Sticker Book England page

This leads us onto our next ‘can we do it?’ moment. We’re going to try and fly out to The Netherlands to catch a game if the flights are reasonable. We don’t even mind not seeing England, it’ll be something fun to do. The games are affordable, so it wouldn’t cost us a lot. We have a friend who lives in The Netherlands who we could stay with… very tempting!

We bought our Panini UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 Finals book ourselves, let us know if you get any doubles!

that familiar Panini sight

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