John Fallon: English WSL charging towards parity with Premier League
AS if London wasn’t a magnet for Irish tourists already, add in the Women’s Super League (WSL) as an extra attraction.
The London Eye, Madame Tussauds, Buckingham Palace, and various other landmarks account for 250,000 travellers who trek across the Irish Sea annually, third only behind the US and France for inflow of visitors.
Of course, English football has pulling power and the sight of a kaleidoscope of club colours on show in Dublin Airport on a Saturday morning demonstrates the market for spending to watch an overseas market is booming.
The weekend before last, the Fallon clan were part of this colony, albeit fusing the Premier League exposure with a broader short break around the English capital.
All very routine for Irish folk raised on a staple of cross-channel activity. It doesn’t necessarily have to come at the cost of watching the domestic fare, rendering the debate about one or the other arguable but ultimately pointless.
Tottenham’s meeting with Liverpool — yes, the VAR overload one — acted as the centrepiece of the trip for the youngest, a 12-year-old Spurs-mad kid anxious to savour life after his hero Harry Kane.
Full value was extracted from that visit to the rebuilt White Hart Lane, a venue which leaves the likes of Old Trafford in the shade when it comes to modernity.
That Saturday evening high absorbed, the next challenge was convincing him about the standard of women’s football.
His older brother was prepared to park his Manchester United allegiance to take the plunge and watch the female equivalent of Chelsea and Tottenham battle it out at Stamford Bridge 24 hours later.
The youngest’s reluctance was couched not alone in his lack of exposure to the product via broadcast and other players but the
Read on irishexaminer.com
