BIANCA WESTWOOD has opened up about the abuse she has faced as a female football reporter.
The Sky Sports legend spent 22 years on Soccer Saturday before leaving at the end of last season.
Westwood was a trailblazer for women in football, being the only non-male reporter on screens in 2012 after initially working behind-the-scenes.
The 49-year-old became a fans’ favourite but has had to battle a barrage of abuse and criticism over the years.
Westwood has lifted the lid on the difficulties she faced as she worked her way up.
The West Ham fan revealed she was initially not given a chance to present on Sky Sports as they already had Clare Tomlinson on screen and “one woman was enough.”
READ MORE IN FOOTBALL
Westwood eventually got an opportunity but nothing prepared her for the hate she would receive, telling The Mirror: “I obviously knew the game inside and out.
“I’d been watching it since I was six-years-old but then for some reason there was this backlash online to having a female match reporter.
“This was just when Twitter was starting to take off – I was really unprepared for that, I was unprepared for that focus and for the vitriol, quite honestly.
“It was really brutal, it was really harsh, and it was constant. So it kind of set me back quite a bit because I would start overthinking it and I wanted everything to be word-perfect.
Most read in Football
FREE BETS – BEST BETTING OFFERS AND BONUSES NEW CUSTOMERS
“Chris Kamara made a career basically out of missing who got sent off, which was hilarious and brilliant and funny, but if I made a slight error then it was like being thrown to the wolves.
“What really used to annoy me wasn’t people telling me I was ugly or I must have been sleeping with the producer or I was old or I wore too much make-up or not enough, none of that really bothered me.
“It was when men were saying: ‘You know nothing about football’.
“That used to really p*** me off because it was like ‘I’ve been watching this probably since before you were born’.”
Westwood helped pave the way for the likes of Michelle Owen, who is now going around the grounds for Soccer Saturday.
After leaving Sky, she has since landed a job as a presenter on talkSPORT and host of Jeff Stelling’s live UK tour in 2024.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
