To paraphrase one of the greatest rock bands to ever come out of the 2012 Olympic host country, there’s a reason why Canada’s women are upstaging the men on the world’s stage.
As the Rolling Stones’ kinda sang: “Time is on their side.”
While the Canadian women’s soccer team was playing for a bronze medal at the XXX Summer Olympic Games in London, the men were back at home. The men haven’t qualified for the Games since the Iron Curtain boycotted the Olympics of 1984 in Los Angeles.
However, to paraphrase another great British band, Led Zeppelin, “Their time is gonna come.”
“It takes time,” said Okotoks Minor Soccer Association vice-president Peter Mundy. “I am a coach as well and I still come across first generation players whose parents haven’t played soccer. They don’t kick a ball before they can walk. Elsewhere around the world, the parents have played, the grandparents have played and the great-grandparents have played.
“It’s going to take time.”
He said he has seen improvement in youth play in Canada.
“If Canada can keep developing the boys level of play the way they are it will eventually have a positive effect on the senior teams as well,” he said.
The Canadian women have also had the advantage of being able to grow up with the sport. There has only been women’s soccer at the Olympics since 1996. The men’s game has been at the Games since 1900. Although Canada won the gold in 1904 (there were only three teams), they have been trying to catch up to the more established European, African and South American countries ever since.
The Canadian women have been on equal footing practically since day one.
“The women’s game just doesn’t have the same history, so everyone is kind of in the same boat,” said Mundy, who grew up in Britain.
He said in his native UK girls and women’s soccer is nowhere near on the same footing as their male counterparts.
“The girls game here as compared to other places in the world is a much stronger game — it’s on an even par with the boys games,” Mundy said. “I compare it to the UK where I am from, and the girls don’t get the same focus as the boys do. In Canada it seems to be on the same or similar standing.”
Darcy Criddle, a member of the Okotoks 35-plus ladies soccer team, said she has been kicking the ball around since she was three years old.
She said she saw firsthand in 1991 while visiting the UK as a tourist, girl’s soccer didn’t get the same respect as it does in North America.
“When I went to England in Grade 9 in 1991 I was so pumped because I thought I was going to get he best equipment,” she said. “I was told: ‘Women do not play football.’
“All I could get was shin guards because women didn’t play. I couldn’t even get other equipment.”
