Tom Garry says that reporting on women’s football was “a chance to do something original”
“A woman in a man’s world”, is the phrase that often comes to mind when talking about female professionals in sports media. However, in the case of Tom Garry, the inverse is true.
Indeed, Garry is a standout journalist within the realm of women’s football. Having around fifteen years of experience under his belt, he has worked with a number of publications including The BBC, The Telegraph and currently, The Guardian.
“I was working as a freelancer for the BBC Sport website around this time ten years ago”, he remarked fondly about how he stumbled into this career.
“The BBC had advertised some short-term roles covering the Women’s Super League for the 2015 season and at that point I had an interest in the women’s game as a fan but I wouldn’t have described myself as an expert.
“It felt to me that it was a chance to do something original about a topic that wasn’t really being covered very much at all.”
Prior to assuming his current role as a women’s football writer at the Guardian, a traditionally liberal publication, Garry held the same title at the Telegraph, its conservative counterpart. Known to be two newspapers with opposing political stances, Garry revealed whether or not this had anything to do with his departure.
“I loved working at the Telegraph, there’s a lovely team there for women’s football but I would say a large section of the women’s football audience are more naturally inclined to be liberal and left-leaning people. Just broadly on average, someone who takes an interest in women’s sport is likely to be someone who is more liberal thinking and younger.
“The main thing for me was that the Guardian invested in a second full-time women’s football reporter which, for the national newspapers, was a first.”
Women’s football as a whole is on the rise with England Football reporting 12,150 registered female football teams in England during the 2023-2024 season, a massive increase from the 5,632 sides in 2016-2017.
Some have pointed to this growing interest being a direct knock-on effect of England winning the women’s Euros in 2022 with a further 1,500 female teams registering since. Despite this, Garry does not believe that this was the sole turning point having noticed more media coverage allocated to women’s football beforehand.
“I would say it was when Sky and the BBC agreed on their first ever joint television deal to cover the WSL a few years earlier than that”, he said on the beginnings of widespread women’s football reporting.
“Sky was bringing onboard their injection of cash but the BBC was also coming onboard because they started to do matches on BBC 1 and BBC 2. I don’t think you can underestimate the free-to-air power of live games on BBC 1.”
With increased coverage dedicated to the women’s game, even more individuals are looking to break into football journalism. Unfortunately, with it being such a niche area of sports media, Garry estimates there are only twenty full-time positions in the UK dedicated to covering the women’s game at present.
“I hope that changes because there’s still such a massively underserved audience. There deserves to be much more coverage, I estimate around twenty because pretty much every national newspaper has got one person doing it.
“You’ve got jobs at the BBC, jobs at Sky, the clubs are hiring very women-specific roles. But if it’s independent national media, that’s probably a good estimate which is better than where we were seven years ago but it’s still not enough.”
The job scarcity within women’s football media has raised questions relating to whether female specialists are given enough opportunities in comparison to their male counterparts. This was recently spoken about by former England-international Eniola Aluko. In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Aluko expressed that her fellow pundit, ex-England footballer Ian Wright needed to be aware that there are only a “finite amount of opportunities” for female media workers within the women’s game. Though Aluko regrets this and has since apologised to Wright, in the minds of some, she brought to light the challenges facing many aspiring female journalists looking to break into the industry.
Even though the job market is far from ideal for those who want to become women’s football writers, Garry has made the most of the Guardian’s unique position of having two full-time specialists. With his base in the north of England, he is able to cover top clubs outside of London where the majority of WSL clubs are located. On the other hand, his colleague Suzy Wrack, who is based in the capital, is able to attend women’s teams in the south of the country.
“Geographically, you’ve got to be across all the Northwest clubs and the London clubs”, he said of this arrangement at the Guardian.
“Perhaps one day in the next few years, you might need to be across Newcastle or Durham or Sunderland, you know, if they get promoted, so a huge area.
“We have my brilliant colleague, Suzy Wrack in London, who attends a lot of the things that happen down south, and I’m based up here near Manchester, where I cover a lot of the Manchester clubs and attend a lot of the events that happen in the north. That’s given us both the opportunity, I think, to do more journalism.”
But having more professionals in this niche is not just a matter of reaching an occupational quota, it’s about raising issues that are present but are otherwise ignored in women’s football. Garry gives the example of his former Telegraph colleague, Fiona Thomas who has written extensively on footballers having their periods and leakage during matches.
“She’s written a lot about the issues across multiple women’s sports, of players being on their period, leakage during matches, and how uncomfortable that’s made lots of players feel with white shorts. I don’t think any individual club would say, you know, Fiona’s fixed this on her own, but I don’t know they realise how powerful that’s been to raise the issue.”
While being a women’s football writer is a specific specialty within sports journalism, it serves as an avenue to contribute something meaningful to an underrepresented demographic. As women’s football continues to grow, both at grassroots and professional level, Tom Garry is paving the way on the media front.
