FA boss Mark Bullingham praises the Lionesses and their coach Sarina Wiegman for their “incredible achievement” of reaching the final of the Women’s World Cup. The Football Association chief executive says winning would “give a huge shot in the arm” for the game and says his organisation is “working on” more TV exposure of the Women’s Super League. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 It's an incredible achievement for Serena, the team and the support team to make our
00:03 first World Cup final since 1966. It's a really big moment for us. For women's football, we've
00:08 invested so heavily over the last few years and grown it really exponentially. But the
00:14 opportunity to win a World Cup would just give a huge shot in the arm and accelerate
00:18 our plans even more. I think Serena has been absolutely instrumental to everything. Of
00:22 course the players have been magnificent as well, but Serena is brilliant. She's a superb
00:27 tactician, she sets a brilliant culture in camp and just everything she does is really
00:33 impressive. We've got a really clear plan. We've got a very clear plan to grow the Women
00:37 and Girls game in schools and in clubs. What this would do would be accelerate that further.
00:42 We know it would lead to more investment, we know it would lead to more interest and
00:45 the whole generation of role models, they're already brilliant role models, but it would
00:48 just give them even more profile and inspire the next generation. A dedicated broadcast
00:53 time for the Women's game would be a huge step forward. It's something we've been working
00:56 on, we'd love to see happen. And particularly in a time slot that works for young families
01:00 because that's the audience really. We've got to continue to invest in the Women's Super
01:05 League in every level actually. We've got to have more big games in big stadia. It's
01:09 been working really, really well so far but we need to do more of that. We need to get
01:13 the best players in the world, we need to get them playing in the league and we need
01:16 to just continue to grow the interest. So we're on a great curve but it can go even
01:20 quicker. Well three o'clock on a Saturday would in many ways work well for the Women's
01:25 game because it's not linked to participation. Most participation in the Women's game works
01:29 well on a Sunday. But there's lots of different issues that need to be navigated throughout
01:33 the world of football to achieve that. But the most important thing would be ending up
01:36 with a slot for the Women's game that would then allow us to grow the league even further.