Eighteen years have passed since Jacqui Oatley became the first woman to commentate on Match of the Day, the BBC’s flagship football highlights programme. Enough time, she points out, for someone not even born back then to have learned to drive.
The furore around Oatley’s commentary of Fulham’s 1-1 draw against Blackburn Rovers in the Premier League on April 21, 2007, bore no resemblance to Oatley’s introduction to American audiences more than a decade later, first with the 2022 men’s World Cup for Fox before covering the NWSL. “It was an absolute dream doing men’s World Cup for them, because you’re not being assessed by: it’s a female commentator — get back in the kitchen,” she says. “I wouldn’t still be doing it if I was experiencing what I did all those years ago.”
Oatley has taken a break from meetings about the inaugural Festival of Women’s Football Awards, which she will help judge, to reflect on what has changed since her first TV commentary in 2007. “What a life experience that was,” she tells The Athletic. “I came through it. I’m still here. I’m still doing the job 18 years later. I’m actually really proud of that because it would have been so much easier to go: ‘OK. Let’s just kind of hide behind the scenes’.”
She had…
