Jill Scott – The internet can be a dark place – it’s harder for female pundits

My Sporting Life is The i Paper’s look behind the curtain at what drives sports stars to greatness. This week, legendary Lioness and broadcaster Jill Scott reflects on her surreal encounters in the I’m a Celeb jungle, her foul-mouthed rant in the Euros final and looks ahead to the new WSL season. I always feared I’d have to stop playing football At any given moment, it felt like football could be taken away from us because I couldn’t see these females playing so I couldn’t see a path. The thought of life without football was like devastating to me as a child. I remember looking for a girl’s football team and we couldn’t find one and I was in tears. My mum was telling us, it’s okay, you can do netball. I used to sofa-surf to keep playing I made such good friendships where we had to sofa-surf, find a way of jumping in a car with someone. We’re also the generation where people weren’t on their phones all the time so I feel like I made such good friends, but I also got to experience being a professional footballer. When I first got to city, I was like ‘wow you get breakfast! You get your kit!’ Shouting “f*** off you f***ing p***k” at my opponent in the Euros final I was doing some coaching abroad with Sydney and one of the kids come up to us and he wasn’t from England. He said, ‘I watched your highlights and I saw what you said to that German player!’ I was like, ‘oh no’. That just probably highlighted the competitive side of me. The camera was not kind to me that day. Scott vs Germany’s Sydney Lohmann at the Euro 2022 final (Photo: Getty) She had hold on my leg and I literally could not get my leg away, so I was so mad, but I shouldn’t have sworn. Probably emotions just got the better of us and then it got caught on camera. I’ve actually got a tattoo of the abbreviation (FOYFP) because we did it as a as a sketch on A League of their Own and I was like, ‘oh, wouldn’t it be funny if I went and got a tattooed’. Now I’m stuck with it. The other tattoo I’ve got If I’m ever having a down day, I look down and it’s a Lioness and then it’s got the date of Wembley, it makes us smile. That’s something nobody can ever take away from you. If there was one day of my life I’d want to relive, apart from another day with my grandma, it would be definitely be the Euros final. I had to kick Alexia Putellas I’m excited to watch London City Lionesses, Mary Earps is back, Alexia Putellas. How exciting that we’re going to watch one of the best players in the world in the WSL. I had a couple of games against her and I think the only way to get past her was to kick her. I don’t think we pay enough attention to the toll on players If you do a full season, maybe compete in a cup, then you do a tournament and go straight back in, mentally it can be tough. I think academies are fantastic and they are now in four to five times a week. I stress all the time we need to keep that enjoyment part of it. We didn’t have anything like that growing up I’d go to the field every day to do my own session, you’d be trying to avoid dog muck and dogs running around just trying to get your fitness in. We were super fit, but technically we probably weren’t that good because we weren’t training with the team every day. I used to have to find out the Lionesses scores on the FA website I was playing for England U19 at the time and I really wanted to play for the seniors. I used to have to go on the FA website and look up the score from the night before, to see if Katie Chapman had scored for England. That’s how we accessed the results. Scott with the European Championship trophy at Wembley alongside Lauren Hemp and Beth Mead (Photo: Getty) Working with Roy Keane He’s brilliant. I can’t thank them enough [The Overlap pundits] because it has been a big space for me to step into. It’s just sitting with your mates discussing the football that happened at the weekend – it’s quite a simple concept but I really enjoy it. I’m literally sitting with my heroes, even though I don’ tell them that! There’s more pressure on female pundits Especially when you’re working on the men’s football, people will say ‘well you’ve never played men’s football’. You kind of get used to that but you just have to believe in yourself. I do have a belief that I know the game of football and having played for England 161 times, I’d like to think I’ve played it in every system possible. That’s not having an arrogance about you, but you have to remember you do know the game. I’ll watch a Premier League game every week so surely it’s okay for us to have an opinion. Sometimes you’ll get names wrong and stuff like that. If you’re watching the women’s game and the men’s game and it’s a lot of information. But I always say I tend not to look on social media. If I’m walking down the street, everybody’s so lovely and always positive and sure, you could find some dark places on the internet, but that for me is not reality. The only people I listen to are the people that matter. If I think could I have been better today, I’ll speak to my agency, rather than listening to a stranger who just wants to give you some grief. I always prioritised playing for England If I pulled the shirt on once, it would have been a massive honour, but to do it 150 times is something that makes us smile. I like writing poetry I was always reading and I like to do bits of poetry as well. I think there’s something about writing and reading and which is still like very special to young children. Growing up it was a lot of buying magazines and it was all male football, and I’m grateful because those guys were who I looked up to an that’s why I wanted to play football, but I think it’s important that young girls can see female players. Read more Kat Lucas: The Lionesses have been put in a farcical position My Sporting Life: Tony Bellew: Nigel Farage ghosted me after I’m a Celebrity I’m a Celebrity was very difficult I went in there straight off the back of the Euros, so I was used to being around teams and people. But I found you don’t really eat much, I’d been training a lot so I found that hard. There were some mad moments in there, sitting with Boy George an absolute icon of music and he’s singing “Karma Chameleon”, and you’re like, ‘what is life?’ It’s great to get the accolade of Queen of the Jungle but the thing you take away is the friendships. I recently got to do Ted Lasso as well. Women’s players can’t sign autographs like they used to The women’s players are very accessible so after a game you’d go and sign autographs as obviously the crowds weren’t massive, but now the players probably do have to be taken away from people – they can’t go round everyone. But I think the way the girls conduct themselves and the time they have for people, they’re role models.