“It was a chance to do something original”: Tom Garry on reporting women’s football
“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 journalism, 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.”
