Isn’t Footie Great? Here’s SK68! (Editor’s Letter)

Jen O’Neill writes as Team GB fly to Tokyo, having decided that attending the Games as press was neither practical nor entirely ethical. She looks back at London 2012 as the breakthrough event for the women’s game in Britain, remembering commentating for BBC Radio 5 Live at Cardiff, Wembley and Coventry, and being in tears with the writer Catherine Etoe watching crowds arrive for Team GB against Brazil. She traces Olympic women’s football back to Atlanta 1996, noting that England qualified in 1995 and were never considered, and runs through Norway stunning the USA in 2000, Brazil’s near-miss in 2004 and Carli Lloyd owning 2008. She congratulates England’s beach soccer side and Glasgow City on a fourteenth successive title.