You all have been great and won our hearts

Jim White, The Independent

Where will you be watching the match on Sunday morning? At home? Down the club, which has been granted early opening hours to accommodate you? In front of the hastily constructed big screen in London’s Victoria Park? Or glimpsed on your mobile as you sit in the pews at your local parish church? If it’s the latter, the vicar won’t mind. After all, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said we should all tune in if we can. Apparently it is what God would want us to do.

One thing is for sure: wherever you plan to absorb the Women’s World Cup Final, you won’t be alone. A vast proportion of the country — well, England – will be watching, and living every kick. Sunday morning will be one of those rare moments of national togetherness that only sport can deliver. Although in truth, in a lifetime of following sport I cannot remember any one event seizing the popular imagination with the same unexpected suddenness as the Lionesses’s progress in this year’s World Cup. England’s men reaching the 2020 Euros final, London 2012, Headingley 2019: their popularity was not surprising.

But as recently as four years ago, nobody would have foreseen the England women’s football team stopping the nation’s clock. Back in 2019, when the Lionesses lost in France at the semi-final stage for the second World Cup on the bounce, it was not the lead item on the Ten O’Clock News. It was an “and finally” adjunct — a minority interest rather than a shared obsession.

Not this time. What accelerated the collective involvement was the England team lifting the European championship at Wembley last summer. That seized the attention all right. That got us bouncing. Success, you see, we are suckers for it. And how the Lionesses provided us with the chance to revel in its shine. Now that they are on the brink of taking hold of an even more significant prize, we are totally invested. Though it is no wonder we have grown to love them. What a change it makes in these most depressing of times to see our representatives flourishing. We have become horribly familiar with the assumption that nothing works any longer in this country, nothing we do is any good. The trains are rubbish, the NHS is in perpetual crisis, our rivers are bubbling with sewage.

But here is a group of English women thriving, showing us that — with decent investment, proper preparation, and sound leadership — there is still real value in our nation. Here they are poised to step on top of the world. And how we love it. Better still, there is so much to admire about these women. These are not solipsistic automatons expecting the world to fall at their feet. They are grafters, workers, toilers, united by an admirable shared determination to realise the excellence within themselves. Already in this competition they have proven so many wrong. When they arrived in Australia, it was widely reckoned they would not better last summer’s Euros success. Diminished as they seemed to be by injuries to their best players, most of us predicted an early departure, probably in the quarter finals. Besides this was a team that had never got beyond the last four in the World Cup. Yet these women have found a way to win. Brilliantly corralled by their genius of a Dutch coach Serena Weigman, even when they have not played well, they have tactically outwitted every opponent. And as the tournament has progressed, they have got better. Their semi-final win over the hosts was a wonderful example of refusing to be cowed by circumstance or history. Of playing to the best of your ability. Of seizing the moment. They lost the match, but won our hearts.

In the process of their progress, what role models they are proving to be. The stalwart skipper Millie Bright; the gifted craftswoman Alex Greenwood; the quiet, reserved, but ultimately explosive Lauren Hemp: these are women to admire, to cherish, examples to emulate. Then there is the coach. Watching Weigman’s team talk on the pitch after the semi-final win was to see the most delightful demonstration of unity; she has constructed a team spirit that appears able to conquer all. You all have lost the match, it happens, but won our hearts.