So you think you're a Winter Olympics expert?

11:53You can try and force feed them, but they are not going to learn till they're ready. and it's about listening and creating an environment where they're ready to learn. And me sitting on the floor was not a clever ploy. It was that I thought I was going to faint, so I sat down on the floor. So I didn't fall over in the toilet while they were all having a fag. I didn't want to fall on the floor. An interesting clarion, who's the main leader of the pack, walked over and said, Miss, you look rotten. Do you want a fag? I said, no, thank you very much. So, you know, it wasn't clever, But from that came a deep understanding of the power of sport, particularly for young people.

12:31Gabby:But also it's an example, isn't it? Also what Gabby said there is that one size doesn't fit all in sport. And one size certainly doesn't fit all when it comes to girls and sport. And I look at my two daughters as well. And we've gone through an era with mine of sometimes it's been encouraged to be a girl on a boys team. matter whether that be a cricket team or a football team but then there are plenty of other girls and you know I've got one daughter who would happily do that but the other daughter actually just wants to play on girls teams whether that be football or cricket and and there has to be a recognition that neither is right neither neither is wrong but different things work for different girls as they progress through sport yeah I think I think we underestimate that moment of puberty for young girls.

13:21You know, at primary school, it's pretty well mixed. Sport is fine. And most girls, not all, some girls don't like that rough and tumble and competitiveness, and you've got to provide something different. But as you go into puberty, boys usually get bigger and stronger. Girls have this problem changing shape, starting with their periods and their menstrual cycle, feeling uncomfortable in sports kit, feeling awkward and difficult about movement and at those moments we've got to work really hard to make sure what we're offering young women is suitable for them and and can appeal to them and it's not about you know whether their toes are pointed when they're doing a forward roll or whether they can throw a ball it's can we help them really enjoy activity and understand its value and through it develop their resilience their confidence their self-esteem and their self-worth Those are the really important questions.

14:19Kirsty Muir:So when you were at that stage and you were engaging young women in some kind of idea of movement and sport, and then your interest in sports science and performance led you to help to design, you know, courses at Loughborough and to really kind of dig deep into how women's sport had been neglected, really, for so many years, as we know, football for 50 years almost, but other women's sport. What was the change in terms of your direction of travel and your career that led you from being somebody who was pushing the agenda in the education system to somebody who was going to have to push harder on almost a national and global level to get recognition for women's sport?

14:57Well, I think all our lives have a bit of serendipity in them, don't they? And I spend five years working, you know, my students were people like Seb Co., Dave Moorcroft, Clive Woodward, just to name a few. Paula Ratcliffe obviously later came on. This job comes up. I'm encouraged to go for it. I end up as the chief executive of the National Coaching Foundation. A man called Duncan Goodhue appears on my doorstep. He's got a rich guy who wants to invest in youth sport. So I get pulled back towards that. We start the Youth Sport Trust. I spend another 10 years doing that. I get engaged with Tony Blair and Tessa Jowell setting up the school sports strategy.

15:43and then one day in 2003 Tessa suddenly said to me could you go in and reform UK sport so in I go into UK sport as chair reform chair and spend 10 years restructuring our Olympic and Paralympic investment program and then I was retiring I was I was I was and then Martin glenn got me and persuaded me to do three days a week i think it was our arrangement three days a week working from home not on any committees ha ha ha for the for the fa for the fa and that's the

16:20Gabby:bit that's the bit i suppose given everything that you've just said and your passion for for youth sport and the the inner cities and all sport and and and getting kids involved did you take a lot of persuading to go to an organisation whose perception is it's full of old men in blazes and actually when you look at FA committees and who still has a say in votes and the FA council it still looks like it could be old men in blazes well I have to say before I answer that that Debbie Hewitt who's our chair has done an extremely good job in in changing the structure of the council and what's happening there.

17:03But no, look, I said no originally to Martin. You know, it felt like Youth Sport Trust, National Coaching Foundation, UK Sport, they were like Everest. You know, my job was to climb Everest and take a team with me that could change the world. That's what we were trying to do, trying to change the world for the better. And I thought, oh, no, I really can't do another one of those. But then I, you know, every night I'd go to bed and I'd think, crikey you know I'm so passionate about girls and women's sport I'm so committed to trying to help girls and women do better in life and achieve great things wouldn't football be an amazing place to kind of change the perception of girls and women and eventually I rang him up and said okay I'll do this three days a week and of course that lasted about a minute and then I was full

17:52Kirsty Muir:time and when you describe yourself as somebody who's a challenger and somebody who doesn't take no for an answer. What kind of things did you have to push hard for? The culture was a real challenge. Winning hearts and minds was the women's game really serious. Should we invest in it? What should we invest in it? The strategy, which was the exciting bit, was everything from grassroots. My job was grassroots all the way through to the lionesses. Yeah, I mean, just but fabulous for me, because the first time my two worlds, if you like, had come into one place, my world and my love of young people and my passion and commitment for excellence.

18:30To be honest, having experienced everything I had at the Olympics, I found it amazing. For example, we weren't allowed to play on the main pitch at SGP. St George's Park. St George's Park. We weren't allowed to play on the main pitch that the men played on. There were no pictures around of women in excellence. The videos that were playing at the Hilton were always of men playing football, even when the women were in. The men would have an exclusive use of the hotel. The women didn't. They just came and were ordinary occupants of rooms in the hotel. The people who were involved in physical conditioning and psychology were good people, but they had no experience of elite women.

19:17They had no experience of the elite end of sport for women. They understood elite sport, but there's a huge difference. And part of that, you know, is making sure that these women were being looked after in the same way we'd look after any, you know, elite performer. So it probably took, if I'm honest, it probably took me four years to get where I wanted to get. And I know the players at times were impatient. They thought I was a dozy what's it because they couldn't see why this house. You know, we would go on easy jet to matches. the men would go on their own plane and the players would say what's the matter why aren't we on these planes and I'd say I know I know leave it with me and I would go and argue for the resources to do that yeah it took time it took me about four years how long did it take you to

20:07Gabby:get access to the main I mean I know there's lots of things there but I am genuinely because we're not I mean what year are we talking 2017 17 so how long did it take you to get access to the main pitch. I mean, that seems odd. I mean... Serena's arrival changed a great deal. So 2015, let's

20:27Kirsty Muir:not forget, the Lionesses had won a bronze medal at a World Cup. They had. So that's two years after they'd come third in a World Cup. And two years later, they would be beaten in a semi-final in a World Cup by USA going on to win it. So we're not talking, you know, they weren't languishing kind of, you know, poor performances in the group stage at this point. They were already elite. you're not surprised I mean I'm like well I am and I'm not because Sue will know it's a kind of you know it kind of nothing kind of shocks you and how actually the speed of change I think that's come in the last five or six years is incredible but you know there was some really bad stuff still going on and actually you still talk to academy mums and dads whose daughters are in academies and you know they're still being at top Premier League clubs shoved out to pitches that are kind of on the far reaches of the training grounds and given the later training slots and, you know, all those having to, you know, we had Steph Horton on the podcast just last week talking about things like access to toilets and, you know, all that kind of thing.

21:27Gabby:Well, it's a big thing in cricket as well and access to nets and which junior teams get access to which nets at which time, particularly when the weather is bad and there may only be two nets available at a certain club or whatever. I think you'd find if you talk to, you know, Claire at cricket or you talk to Nicky at football or my colleagues at netball or any of the team sports that are rugby that are trying to push through and break into a professional era, it's tough. You know, clubs may look on the outside like they're investing, but quite often, for example, they'll send the men's fitness person who happens the academy fitness man across to do the fitness work because they don't want to employ a separate person because of cost.

22:11so there's a huge piece of work still to be done and you can understand sue you know because there

22:18Kirsty Muir:is an economic kind of play here we were talking about this yeah and you can understand obviously clubs are trying to do the right thing but they're also trying to you know manage their finances and you've got to have access to the right people who who have that right training and i i learned something last week i was sat on a really interesting kind of forum with lots of stakeholders from government and from UK sport and talking about the decline in women coaching there's been a drop-off in the amount of women who are available in coaching and that doesn't help your argument does it in terms of getting those people in what why do you think that is and what can we do or what are you looking at doing about that getting more women into into coaching sport well you know I think if you go back to my you know dotage my old age I go back a bit you find that most people who came into coaching started off as teachers.

23:08So they were PE teachers and then they still went into coaching. And you coach to a certain level. And then when it became performance coaching, which means massive commitment in time and energy and, you know, there are other priorities for women. And I think that balance for women between, you know, home, children job coaching and and payment for coaching is you know until you get to a very high level is not great so you're asking volunteers essentially through a lot of the pathway for women's sport they are volunteers you're asking them to give up you know tuesdays thursdays saturdays sundays and they've got their own children they've got their own lives they've got their own jobs most Well, most people have either, you know, they're doing jobs and being mums and that's a job in itself.

23:59So you've got to appreciate the challenges we've got and we've got to find more investment, more incentives. And the other side of it, Gabby, is that women don't have the confidence, many of them, to step forward. You know, it's quite a big thing. It's one thing to coach when it's your little ones and you're out there with a small group. Because as a mum, you're used to handling lots of little people running about. It's fine. But when you start to get to that performance piece, you start to think, am I able to do this? And one of the initiatives that we wouldn't place at the FA is we've taken a lot of the senior experienced players and put them onto an A licence.

24:38So they're fast tracked onto an A licence. You know, Beth Mead, others are all now on that. Scotty is a great coach, for example, but it's finding time when Scotty's, you know, not doing other things like in the jungle or wherever she is next.

24:52Gabby:But most of them are doing it, aren't they? We had Steph on last week. Steph's doing one. Is it Christian? A lot of those are leading. I think that's the root way to get more women at the highest level is to transfer them from, and it's, you know, the old adage is because you can play doesn't mean you can coach. It's absolutely true. But if we take them through the right training and support, hopefully they'll step into good coaching roles and they'll need mentoring, they'll need support, but hopefully they'll get there.

25:20Kirsty Muir:And as somebody who saw the power and the impact, you were there on Super Saturday and you were involved in that whole 2012 build up. And, you know, that was such a game changer for women's sport in lots of ways, because there were so many visible, brilliant female sports people who became household names. We've heard that there is a combined bid going in for the 2035 World Cup, FIFA Women's World Cup, to be held across the home nations. So that's 10 years of build up that would be. And obviously at some point within that, it would either be awarded or not. And another generation to be inspired.

25:56Kirsty Muir:And you can see, you know, how that could accelerate change again, can't you? When you've got a landmark like that to aim for. Yeah, I mean, it's massive. I remember very distinctly, as I know you do, that wonderful moment when we won the Euros and I went down onto the pitch. And there's a picture in my book of me hanging on to Chloe, who came at me from about 10 yards away. And my first thought was, oh, my God, if she jumps, I've got no chance. But she jumped and I managed to hang on to her. And the joy of the players was unbelievable. And I could feel it myself. It was, I suppose, you know, in a simplistic way, it was like a parent.

26:38I felt that wonderful joy of watching their joy. But the thing that really struck me was when they went off to go round the pitch, I sat on the empty podium and watched them go round. But I looked around and there were 87 ,000 people in that stadium and 17 million plus watching on television. And I thought, I just wonder how many lives we've changed today. how many little girls will wake up tomorrow not all necessarily rush out and put on football boots but will wake up and think you know you can achieve your dream you can and suit not just

27:13Kirsty Muir:the little girls it's also those people who for years had said women's sport it's not interesting it's boring it you know it's not competitive all those kinds of things that have been kind of thrown down my throat and on social media and many other women who've spoken up about wanting to push women's sport that day was also about saying no this is this is great sport and and that opens up possibilities for brands and marketing and sponsorship that as we've seen over the last few years where people are taking women's sport seriously yeah I agree it's and and you know we've got this summer haven't we we've got uh the rugby world cup and we've got the euros again and they are key moments for us in women's sport they are the shop window uh you know and And what I've always said to my colleagues at football is, while the shot window will give us that moment, we have to be doing the real work at the back to make sure the legacy is embedded properly in grassroots football.

28:12You know, when we did the Euros, we did host city planning in every host city that was having a match. And we offered half a million new opportunities to play. And we filled those half a million new opportunities to play. So, you know, I think legacy and making sure that that inspiration gets turned into participation is really important.

28:33Gabby:Well, just an insight into how things have changed. My 11-year-old, she plays football and her under 11s at club level, they have four different teams.

28:43Kirsty Muir:Wow.

28:44Gabby:Four teams. And I think when my 17-year-old was 11, they may have had one team at that stage. And that's the difference. What I'm also interested in, though, looking to the future, because, you know, both my girls play netball as well, Sue, and I'm interested in what competition there is between sport now. And this actually comes back to the Olympics, because different sports maybe don't want to share secrets with each other because they're all competing for funding. is is the world of UK sport is it collaborative or is it actually quite competitive now because you're competing for partners sponsors and and young people to play yeah it's a good it's a really great question I mean I I to go back to UK sport I think the greatest one of the greatest uh changes that we brought about was that you know we had some sports that were already achieving when I went in in 2003, we were 10th in the medal table in Sydney, about to be 10th in Athens.

29:46Question to me, can we do better? And I looked and said, yes, we can, but we're going to have to disrupt the entire system. But one of the things that we did see was that we did have some amazing performance directors, three or four really outstanding people. And then in other sports, we had people who were perhaps not quite at the same level. And I remember bringing them all in to a meeting and there were a few that wanted to resist it because they didn't think they needed it, but I insisted everybody was there. And I gave them all. I said, it's a simple meeting. I'm just going to give you all a piece of paper and I want you to write on this piece of paper the one thing you do in your sport better than anybody else in this room.

30:25There'll be something. There'll be something. And they all, you know, somebody wrote, you know, PhD thesis, but some of them just took time and wrote a couple of simple things. And then I got them to exchange that And those meetings of those performance directors just flourished. That was about sharing performance expertise and we can do that. The question, can you share marketing and commercial partners? Probably not, but you can share performance expertise. And one of the things I've said to Nicky and to Fran at Netball is we need to get together. Netball, cricket, rugby, you know, we need to sit in a room and we need to look at where we can help drive one another's mission.

31:08And Nicky's now pulled a meeting together, which I think is next week, where we're going to start that process of having a look. How do we support one another? how do we drive this movement for both the professionalisation of women's sport at the top and the health and well-being of young women at the bottom?

31:25Kirsty Muir:And of course in terms of competition there is also talk of the WSL having a period where relegation will not happen and teams will still be coming up from the championship to expand the league which is on the one hand a driver for more competition down the track because you'll have more teams and therefore you'll have a bigger league to work with. Obviously, there are those dissenters, Sue, who don't like the idea of a season which is like a franchise almost, isn't it? It's like you're just kind of there in this bubble and you haven't got that threat of relegation at the bottom end and they don't see that as great competition or great entertainment for people.

32:04Yeah, look, I understand that. But sometimes to lead well means to take tough decisions. Do you sleep well at night? No. Do you get battered? Yes. But if it's the right thing to do for the mission, and the mission has got to be not about you, it has to be what is right for the game, what is right for the sport. And I trust Nikki 100%, who's the CEO of the Women's Super League, and Holly, who's her COO. They are two outstanding women. They have women's sport at their heart, they are going to have to make some tough decisions. And no, everybody isn't going to like it. You know, when I decided to pull licenses together in 2018 for the Women's Super League and the second tier, the women's, what was then the Women's Super League 2, Doncaster Bells could have literally killed me.

32:54They sat on the front row and said, you're killing us. I said, I'm not trying to kill you. But if I was sitting where you are, I'd be really mad with me. But I can't make decisions that are right for you I've got to make decisions that are right for the game and as painful as that is that's what we've got to do and I think Nicky and Holly and the board and the clubs will make the decision that allows the investment that's required to go into the game and to give the game its own distinctive personality and I think that's absolutely the right thing to do.

33:25Gabby:The promotion and relegation works within men's football at the moment because there is a massive pyramid because there's always been a massive pyramid but virtually every other sport has these has these real kind of don't they see they have these such dilemmas and quandaries over with

33:41Kirsty Muir:Gallagher premiership well Gallagher premiership makes it very hard for a team from the championship and there's no talk of that becoming a close shot the championship super league has a bizarre

33:49Gabby:licensing thing and and and sort of flirts flits between promotion relegation for a few years and then not having it the county championship men's county championship for a few years yes i think it can be a numbers game.

34:01Kirsty Muir:Because you just haven't got that level that football has. Football can go down to 92 clubs.

34:06Gabby:Well, you want to go further than that. On Saturday, we, Netball, launch our new Super League. We have eight teams. We did a special episode, Sue, on it.

34:19Kirsty Muir:We know there was a lot of consternation at the very beginning of that and the announcement. And it's a stretch, even with eight teams. Because why does it matter that you keep it to a small number. The answer is because it isn't going to sell broadcast if you're beating somebody 100-0. It isn't. It's got to be tight games. It's got to be competitive. We've got to fill stadiums. We've got to get women to want to come and watch our sports live, which is very difficult. It's got to have jeopardy. Otherwise, you're not going to get broadcast. I mean, we've been very lucky. Sky and BBC are covering every single netball Super League game.

34:57And in fact, Sky are releasing it onto YouTube so you can see it free of charge if you want to. You know, it's really important that we work very hard to raise the visibility of women's sport. But the reality at the top end is, you know, even eight is a push. Even some of those people are struggling because it costs money. As you said earlier, Gabby, it's not cheap to run a professional women's team in anything. So we've got our challenges, but we're really excited. we hope we can drive this league and that we can make a real difference.

35:31Gabby:But going back to the episode that we did, the one thing that you also have to be aware of, Sue, don't you, is geographical differences and making sure you don't leave whole swathes of the country. South, west and north-east. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:44Kirsty Muir:Well, it gives football and rugby a chance to go mop up those athletes, doesn't it, I guess? Yeah, that's phase two. We've put youth pathways in there and we will invest in the talent pathways in those areas. Whether they can then translate into a full-time professional side is a separate matter. Sue, your energy and your passion doesn't seem to have dimmed at all from that PE teacher who's in Mossside. We talked about a 2035 World Cup bid. I know you'll be in your mid-80s then, but are you going to keep on going to watch the Lionesses lift a World Cup on home soil? Wouldn't that be a wonderful way to go out.

36:25Yeah, it would. Of course I would. I just am passionate for girls and women's sport to be successful. I want the rugby women to do well this summer. You know, I want us to do well in the Euros. But to watch England raise a World Cup would be pretty special. And, you know, netball has got Commonwealth Games next year and we've got the World Cup the year after. And our ambition, you know, you might think is a bit great, But we want to lift that World Cup in 2027. And I've talked to Jess a lot, who's the head coach, brilliant, brilliant woman. And we believe we can do that. And we have to start off with that belief.

37:04We have to start off with this isn't just we're going to try. We have to believe we can. And that's kind of a message in the book, isn't it, really? You know, I think I've said on the back of the book something like, you know, we often think that our destiny is determined by others. But if we're prepared to swim upstream, then sometimes we can change the world.

37:24Kirsty Muir:Well, you have certainly done that already and it doesn't look like you're going to stop anytime soon. What I love and admire is the passion to get visibility and to have really elite women performing brilliantly, but also your recognition of just how societally sport is so powerful and can change lives at a level that, you know, is not about elite sport. it's about somebody having belief in themselves and thinking that they can do anything and anything is possible.

37:51Gabby:Sue's book The Game Changer is out today. Thank you very much for joining us and we hope you'll come back on on the sports agents. Over the next 10 years before the 2035 World Cup. Thank you both very much indeed it's been a real pleasure. Next Gabby it's a link that could sound like it's off the one show so you might as well do it.

38:11Kirsty Muir:Next up it's North Korea. Find out why. After the break.

38:16Gabby:The Sports Agents.

38:20Gabby:The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. So the reason we're going to talk about North Korea is because we're reading an article in The Guardian that talks about how the Premier League is being shown on North Korean television, but not quite in the way you would expect it to be. To talk a little bit more to us about this, Martin Williams from 38 North, a US-based think tank devoted to analysis about North Korean media and technology, joins us. Thank you very much for being with us, Martin. Hello. So they're showing Premier League games, but maybe, what, six months after they've happened and not necessarily with any context behind them?

39:07Gabby:Is that right? I don't think any of your listeners would be very pleased with the Premier League coverage in North Korea. It's not exactly Sky Sports. Or Match of the Day. Nothing's like Match of the Day. Premier League's on North Korean television a lot. And one of the things we do here is we just kind of watch North Korean TV. It's on in the background. I started noticing these football games. And I decided one day just to look up and see what game they were playing. It turned out that it was about six months old. So then I decided to look at a few more and it turned out that they were all old too.

39:39Gabby:So this started a little project where we looked at the last few years of Premier League coverage to see if that was just a one-off in the couple of games that I first looked at or whether it was a theme. And it definitely was a theme.

39:52Kirsty Muir:So where are they getting the footage from? Because they are not global rights holders, obviously.

39:59Gabby:No, in fact, North Korean television shows almost no foreign television whatsoever. Almost everything is domestically produced and broadcast. It has to be because there's an element of propaganda in almost every part of their output. So this is one of the very good questions. We think that they're probably pirating it from somewhere. We think that's probably one of the reasons why the games are all shown so late, because they have ability to get a few games. To give you an example, in last year's season, 2023-2024 season, they showed just 21 Premier League games, but they were repeated multiple times.

40:38Gabby:And all of those games are from the first three months of the season. So someone managed to get some of the games in. We don't know from where from, though. There are no broadcaster logos on the screen that are covered up or anything like that. And it doesn't appear that they're talking over commentators in a different language.

40:55Kirsty Muir:So what language is the commentary in?

40:57Gabby:The commentary is in Korean. It's a local commentator who has possibly no knowledge or enthusiasm for football whatsoever. I can think of a few of those over here in years gone by. But anyhow, there's certainly no emotion in any of the coverage. It's very matter of fact, which, yeah, all makes a pretty poor lot if you're trying to be a Premier League fan in North Korea. So a two-part question then. Why are they showing this? What would the North Korean regime's reasoning be for putting on some Premier League games? And the second part, which I suppose is a bit more difficult to answer, do the audience know what they're watching?

41:39Kirsty Muir:There is a heritage of football in North Korea, isn't there?

41:42Gabby:I mean, obviously, they'll know they're watching football. I didn't mean that. But given everything is so controlled, my point is, do they have any idea what this really is, if they see it, it's Liverpool? I think they know what they're watching in terms of, they know it's English football, they know the teams, but that's described, that's on screen when they're showing it. the reason they're showing it this all kind of started sports and football have been on occasionally but back in 2022 north korea had its first big covid lockdown and tv used to start at 3 p.m in the afternoon and since then it started at 9 a.m so they had six hours of extra broadcast to fill each day they started putting sport on in the afternoon and most of the sport they show is sport that North Korea is traditionally good at, things like table tennis, powerlifting, judo, stuff like that.

42:38Gabby:And then the only exception to that is football. They show Premier League, they show Champions League, and they show World Cup. World Cup matches are shown next day or two days after, and North Korea does get right to the World Cup, which is why we think that this delay might be a rights question. In terms of why they chose football, it's a globally popular game. It's something that everybody can play. Don't forget either that last year, the under 20 women's World Cup, North Korea was a world champion. So there is, you know, there is a domestic football league. People do follow football in North Korea, but I don't think they, they don't know the ins and outs of the Premier League.

43:17Gabby:They're not, you know, on their phones on, you know, transfer day, trying to find out who's going to what team or anything like that.

43:23Kirsty Muir:None of that exists. But they don't show Wolves, Brentford or Spurs games because of South Korean players. who play for those teams, which I just think is absolutely brilliant. Because if they ever did decide to do a full season, it would make the story so interesting, wouldn't it, if they carried on omitting those matches. And you obviously have deduced that's why they're not showing those games.

43:43Gabby:Yeah, we found that they didn't show those games. Also, interestingly, in the Champions League, they weren't showing PSG, I think, as a South Korean player. Yeah. Until the game that PSG got knocked out. And in the World Cup coverage, they didn't show any of the South Korean games until the last game where South Korea got knocked out.

44:03Kirsty Muir:So they're also showing other competitions, not just Premier League then?

44:05Gabby:In that first year, 2022, they actually jumped between Premier League, Bundesliga, a couple of other European championships. But after that, they pretty much settled on just the Premier League, the Champions League. In fact, they showed a Champions League match today. I was just looking it up. The last Premier League match they showed was two days ago. and that was Manchester United against Brentford, originally played on October 19th in the UK and it was shown two days ago. So that's what, like a four-month delay? I think Ten Hag was still the manager then. I think Eric Ten Hag was still the manager.

44:40Kirsty Muir:They're going to be in for a right shock, aren't they? The next time they watch and they see they've got a new manager, they don't know why he's gone.

44:46Gabby:Can these leagues that presumably are being, I mean, it's kind of pirate coverage, isn't it? I mean, I'm guessing the leagues can do very little about Do you think Richard Masters wants to wade in there? Trying to take on North Korean state television. They've got no money. They're never going to pay for these rights. Quite how they're getting them, yeah, we're not sure. They could try and do it, but also, you know, what's the point? In fact, one of the things that might be good is that different countries, including the UK, you know, the UK has an embassy in North Korea. We have diplomatic relations with them.

45:25Gabby:and the government's very keen to do a lot of sort of soft diplomacy. Maybe one of the things they could do is persuade the Premier League to give North Korea to more up-to-date games or something, just to kind of improve the image of the UK and the country or something like that. But I think going after them commercially is never going to work.

45:41Kirsty Muir:Maybe get Alan Shearer to go over and do a PA.

45:44Gabby:I'm more than happy to buy the plane ticket to send Alan over just for a documentary to North Korea.

45:50Kirsty Muir:Can I ask how you get a job watching North Korea? Korean television monitoring their media and where that intelligence obviously goes. Or is that actually something you can't share?

46:02Gabby:Oh, no, no, no. This is all stuff we publish on the website. We just sort of do analysis of North Korea. It's something that I fell into. I used to be a journalist. I was out in Japan and I kind of got very interested in North Korea because it is a fascinating country. And yeah, I just sort of ended up in that. Have you ever been? Would it be possible for you to go? Like genuinely, I don't know how that works. Yeah, I have been before. It's difficult at the moment to go because the country is closed off to pretty much all foreigners. But occasionally tourism is opened up and South Koreans are not allowed to go, but everyone else is allowed to go there.

46:45Gabby:So it is a country that's possible to get into. We get North Korean TV on satellite, which is how we manage to watch it. and yeah it enables us to do exciting research and just to go just to go back to the the women's the under 20 team that were the one the women's under 20 world cup which kind of brings us full circle on this episode i mean spoken to sue campbell earlier is sort of women's football a big thing for for north korea i mean is that so do you know is that something that they have targeted, say, over the last decade to get to a stage of winning it? It's a very difficult question to answer because so little information comes out of North Korea.

47:26Gabby:I mean, I think this is one of the reasons why it doesn't matter that, you know, Manu Brentford was only just shown on TV because there's no internet access. People don't have access to satellite TV or foreign newspapers or anything like that. So they don't know what's going on. But also we have very little knowledge of what's going on, except for what we see on television and things like that. And a lot of the domestic sport is never covered on television, or at least the television that we see. We do know that there's a football league. Usually at the end of each season, there's a little news report that goes out saying who won.

47:59Gabby:That's about all that I know about the domestic football. So do they show their own domestic football on television or not? Not on the main channel, no. The main channel is what we get on satellite, and we never see anything, not just that, not even any domestic sport.

48:12Kirsty Muir:It would be really interesting to see how those women progress if they do and if they are able to be competitive beyond under-20s. Because there's one thing leading a group of young women in that way. But then when you get into the older teams, if you like, and the professional teams, can they keep that level of intensity up? They could go and actually challenge at a World Cup would be quite the story, wouldn't it?

48:35Gabby:Absolutely.

48:36Kirsty Muir:Keep us posted if you happen to see any women's football there, Martin.

48:40Gabby:I will do it. I mean, I'm thinking they know so little about sports. This is maybe a new market for you guys as well. Seems a very good place to leave it. Thanks. We'll see how we get on with that. And we'll let you know. Cheers, Martin. Thank you. Bye.

48:55Kirsty Muir:It would be interesting, wouldn't it, to go to North Korea and see how young people are because they don't have access to the internet. They're not on social media. I know life is very different for them in many, many other ways. but I wonder if it balances itself off in terms of their mental health and their positivity in life.

49:14Gabby:Yeah. National service is a slight negative but the lack of TikTok is a big positive. Why not? I hope they're listening. They're always listening. Get in touch on socials or via email at thesportsagentsatglobal.com.

49:32Kirsty Muir:Remember, you can catch up with all episodes of The Sports Agents. We've referenced quite a few today, haven't we? It's our first anniversary. it's on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts hit subscribe or follow and don't forget to rate and review look forward to reading an email out

49:44Gabby:from Kim Yong-un in the coming weeks thanks for listening