The Guardian's Women's Football Weekly - Baroness Sue Campbell on changing the game – Women’s Football Weekly podcast

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Baroness Sue Campbell joins Suzy Wrack and Sophie Downey to discuss her journey and her recent book, The Game Changer

This is The Guardian. Welcome to a very special bonus episode of The Guardian Women's Football Weekly. Faye couldn't be with us today and I'm feeling very powerful. Luton Town? Meh. Instead, you've got Sophie and I, and we sat down with Baroness Sue Campbell head of the launch of her new book The Game Changer. Sue has been at the forefront of UK sport for many years with integral work at the Youth Sports Trust, heading UK sport during the 2012 Olympics and leading a period of transformation for women's football at the FA, culminating in England's Euro 2022 win. With the release of the book, we caught up with Sue to discuss her illustrious career and the future of women's football.

Welcome Sue, it's great to have you with us today. We would ask you how your retirement is going, but it seems like you're still very much involved in sport. I think it's not the first time you've failed to retire either. Congratulations on the new book. It's really brilliant. We both had us cackling with laughter one minute and then shedding a tear the next. We were like going through it together. What sort of made you want to write a book and how did you find the process? I mean, my process of book writing has been finding it pretty hellish. Hopefully you found it better than I did. I found it quite cathartic to sort of go back and I think as an individual I've never really

looked behind me, I've always looked in front of me and to go back and think through the journey and to, I just wanted to hopefully inspire people to realise that you can make a difference. You don't have to be a genius to do that. You have to have a really clear mission and a passion for something. And if you're prepared to work at it and stick with it and try and make a difference. And for me, my mission has always been to try and provide better opportunities for girls and women, either to fulfil their dreams and win their medals and win their championships or to use sport as a powerful vehicle to help women have hope and feel better about themselves and do better in life. So

it was very cathartic but I tried to focus in on those moments that were life-changing for me and that had some sort of meaning for me or lesson for me that hopefully is built to help me do the job I've done. If we take it back to the beginning, can you tell our listeners about how your journey in sport began? Yeah, well I think my mother described me as feral when I was little. I was outside all the time, the only way you got me in was to bang a spoon on a plate. So I was either

climbing trees or roller skating with Brian Carrier or kicking a ball with the lads in the street. There were no other girls kicking a ball at that time, very similar I'm sure to lots of people's stories. So I was a real sporty kid. I wasn't good academically. I did manage to get an 11 plus, which was a miracle. But I went into the bottom stream of the grammar school and my heart was broken when they told me I couldn't do football because they didn't do football then for girls. You know, it's all very familiar, isn't it?

The only sports I could do was netball and hockey. I played both, I loved both, but I was built more for a netballer than I was a hockey player. I played international sport. I competed for my country in athletics. I competed. I was England in the 21 netball. Captain, I played for England. But in one of my earlier periods in sort of not doing so well in school, my PE teacher asked me what I was going to do with the rest of my life. And I said, oh, I'm just going to play sport. And

she said, well, you won't earn a living just playing sport, which of course, in those days, you would never have thought about earning a living. So I became a PE teacher. So those were my early days really of discovering that I had to kind of work a little harder academically to get where I wanted to go, which was to be a teacher. And that was the beginning. And then my first teaching job in Mossside was probably the moment in which my mission was born. Up to that point I'd love sport for sport's sake. I never thought about it as a tool or a vehicle to help girls and women grow in their self-esteem

and self-worth and do better in life. I just played it. I loved it. There's a moment in the book, and I think actually you told me about this a while ago, where you basically bunk off school and go to the next school and just wait to be able to play football. Tell us a little bit more about that. How the hell did you get away with it? How long did you get away with it for as well? About a week. So no, what happened was my mum and my dad had both left school when they were 13. They'd been chased by attendance officers, but neither of them, like me, wanted

to be in school. And they made their own way in life and they wanted their two girls, my sister and myself, to have a good education. So they sent us to what was essentially a private school, Dorothy Grant's High School for Girls in Beeston. But all the boys and the lads I was playing football with after school were all at the local Chilwell Primary School. And I noticed they were all getting better than me, which is really great because I'm highly competitive. So I said, why are you getting better than me?

They said, well, we play every lunchtime and we play now. I said, where? They said at school. I said, oh, we don't do that at school. So I thought, well, maybe I should go and join them. So I got put on the bus to go to school, but I just got off a few stops earlier and played football. Then I hid in the bushes while they went. I mean, some days I got soaked, but it didn't matter. I played football and I'd come home and my mother would say, gosh, you know, very untidy. I said, oh yeah.

Well, you know, we did a lot of sport today. And then she said, um, then the school rang and said, you know, can you send us a note and explain why Sue's not in school? And my mother said, but she is. She said, no, she's not. So she told my father and he said, don't say anything. We'll follow her. So they put me on the bus and followed me.

Saw me get off and go out and play football with the lads and then hide in the bushes. And then at night, my father said to me, what do you think you've been doing? So I said, well, I've been at school. He said, what did you learn today? Well, I learned a lot about football. He said, tell me about it. So I tell him, you know, I've learned movement, use my left foot better and you know, I'm doing all this stuff. And then he said, what else did you

learn? I said, oh, no, nothing much. He said, no, you're sitting in that bush. That was it. Yeah. So he blessed me. He moved schools for me so I could play football. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. He didn't punish you for it. Yeah. So he blessed me, moved schools for me so I could play football. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. He didn't punish you for it. No, no, he made me, he let me go to the local primary school. I guess that's a prime example, maybe A, of the barriers that you face playing sport as a girl, and that many girls also face, but also your willpower to to barrel right through. Yeah, my stubbornness. What do you think it is about you to make you kind of persist with it all?

I think sport is the way I express who Sue Campbell is and certainly as a child because I wasn't academic and because I didn't read very much. The way I expressed who I wanted to be was sport and I was competitive and I was very willful. You'll see in the book later on when I say your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness, which was when I turned all that willfulness on myself and became anorexic. So your greatest strength, which is your determination, your willfulness and your sheer doggedness to do something turned the wrong way, can be destructive. And so I think it is, you know, and I don't, I try never to let things become personal and mission driven. So if I'm driving to get equality in football, for example, and somebody says something stupid to me personally, that drifts away from me. I don't worry about that. But if they have a go at the mission, then I'll come out fighting.

So the mission is what I've been focused on all my life. Whichever mission I happen to be on at that moment, that's who I am. You speak a lot about the influence of your parents and the story of your school report is particularly touching. I think that both had a sort of tears in their eyes. How significant have they been in shaping the belief system and the journey? Unquestionably. I mean, mum wasn't into sport in any way, but was always there, full of love and kindness and generosity and humour. God, she had a great sense of humour all the time. My father was really into sport and they never judged me. I never felt judged even when I wasn't doing well at school and I

got that shocking report. I didn't feel like a bad person and if you remember the end of that anecdote is that I'm crying because I know I've fibbed to my dad so I'm now a bit nervous about what the consequences are and I'm looking down and I said, oh I'm just going to be a disaster aren't I? And he said, you just look at me, look me in the eyes and I looked in his eyes, he says, you will be whatever you want to be. You just haven't decided what it is yet. That's stayed with me. I mean, you know, you are, and I believe that. I believe that's true for all of us. And part of what I'm trying to say in the book is don't let people tell you you can't. You know, it's too easy to believe we're controlled somehow by other

people. But if you want to be your own person, if you want to be true to yourself, you've got to be prepared to swim upstream. That's what it says on the back of the book, you know, you can't go with the peer group, you can't just go with where it's popular or it's easy, you've got to have the strength to do what is right. You certainly had to do that in all of the positions that you've held. We obviously know you from your time at the FA, but before that you played a key role at the Youth Sports Trust and then moved to UK Sport. What kind of foundations did those moments of your career give you for success? Well I think in a way they're the two ends of the continuum. I mean Youth Sports Trust was very much about bringing to life that mission I'd developed in Manchester, which was how did we improve young people's lives through physical education and sport in schools? And we don't, we weren't

talking about it being a talent pathway and everybody being brilliant. That wasn't what we were trying to do. Of course, if that's your dream, that's your desire, of course you want to make that possible. But we were really more focused on how it could improve learning, how it improved attendance and behaviour. We had a set of schools that were called specialist schools in those times because that was a government initiative. I always remember meeting the first 11 schools and all the other specialisms, technology and music and everything else, was run by the Technology Trust, but they didn't want sport because they didn't think it would work. And I met these 11 and I said, I want to be really clear with you, this sports initiative is not about how many teams you've got. It's about can we use sport to affect whole school improvement? Can we change every life with sport? And, you know, one of those schools in

Manchester became the best school in the country from a very poor start using sports, culture, values, behaviors, prefects were called captains. Everything shifted in the school and the whole school improved. So for me, Youth Sport Trust was how did I realize the dream of making sport available and accessible to every child? And that they came out of it better in life, might be better in sport, but not necessarily, but better in life. And then UK sport was the other end really, which was, I was put in there by Tessa Jowell in 2003, and I was called the reform chair. And Tessa was working hard to get Tony Blair committed to hold the Olympics in 2012. We were 10th in the medal table in Sydney,

looked like we were gonna be 10th again in Athens. And really Mr. Blair was saying to Tessa, you know, is that as good as we can be? So she put me in and said, is that as good as we can be? I said, I don't know the answer to that question. And having worked at it, I went back after six months and said, we can do a lot better, but we're going to have to change the whole system and you're going to have a lot of people crying and screaming at you. And she said, that doesn't sound too good. I said, no, but if you

want to be better than 10th, we've got to take a different approach to performance. And as you know, we were fourth in Beijing, third in London, second in Rio. And that doesn't happen because you want it to. It happens because you're prepared to take on the system and change it and drive it. And to build a high performance system in any sport when you start is six to eight years. I know we all in football particularly think it's the coach. You know, if it's not going well, get rid of the coach, get another one in. It isn't always the coach that's the issue, it's the whole system, the environment, the other people that support the players, the players themselves. The whole thing needs to grow and it needs to have belief.

And so I guess at one end Youth Sport Trust was helping with that mission about changing lives and at the other it was helping me help people realize their dreams in sport through sporting excellence. So they were a great combination of things. And when I came to football, you know, I was blessed. I got the lot. I mean, I didn't feel blessed at times, but I was blessed. I got the lot, which meant I could do both and really look at how they connected and what you could do with them. You know, and I think, you know, I was so proud of so many things, but the one that will stay with me forever, and I know Susie knows this story and you probably do too, was on the bus, you know, the morning after the Euros,

when we were all at two hours sleep, we'd all got hangovers of some sort and Leah and Lotts had tapped me on the shoulder and I thought, oh lord somebody's ill at the back of the bus and they said no no, we don't want our legacy to just be a million of the euros, we want our legacy to be bigger than that. That was one of my proudest moments because it was like the two worlds suddenly talking to one another and that felt really special and you know they did a brilliant job, Leah are in lots on that. Fantastic. It's great. It feels like a continuation of that legacy of belief and like having principles behind what you're doing, right? You say in the book that you say, I earned a reputation

for making tough decisions in the pursuit of success, but I'm not sure that there's any other way to become world leading. Have you ever felt at times that you've got got that wrong, got some of the decisions wrong? Do you have any regrets at any point? I'm sure I've got lots wrong. I think we all do. And I think sometimes you learn more from those things than you do from the things you get wrong. I think I've always used, you know, you don't do any of these things on your own, ever. You know, leadership is not about you. It's about your ability to empower

and enable a group of people to go on a journey. And if you look at old battles, you know, the general isn't the one out the front. He's the one sitting on the hill sending the other people out to battle. So, you know, I think, I don't believe leadership is about just about you. So one of the most important things is to surround yourself with very good people who you completely trust.

So where I've made mistakes has probably been checked by one of them before it becomes a public mistake. You know, at UK Sport when we were rethinking the whole thing, we had by that point John Steele as my chief exec, Peter Keane as my performance director, Liz Nickel as my governing body lead and Tim Hollingsworth. All of those people go on to do very great things with their lives and Tim was my comms director and you know I'd say well I think you should do and they go hang on a minute boss, hang on a minute you know that was not. So I think if you surround yourself with good people it doesn't stop you having strong ideas, big ideas, but you've got to then moderate them and be coached into thinking, how do

we make this happen? So I have made mistakes, but fortunately, not too many of them got out in the public. Moving on to the FA, of course, I guess that was a huge, huge challenge to take on, a huge project to take on. When you look back on it, how do you kind of sum up the kind of scale of that task and you know, what was it like to get the FA really thinking about the women's game properly? I've said on many an occasion I think it was the hardest job I've had. Martin Glenn, who invited me to join the FA, I told him I'd do two or three days a week.

I'd only work from home. And I'd build him a team, write him a strategy and be gone in two years. Well, that didn't work out, did it? So I think the hardest bit was the hearts and minds stuff. You know, there were good people in the FA. Many of them still there. They were doing good things, but they weren't noticed. The game didn't have any visibility inside the FA, let alone outside the FA, in terms

of it was something they were doing because it was the right thing to do, but not something they were doing because it was something they were going to drive and be proud of. So the first thing for me was to get some very quick and I won't call them easy wins but wins so doubling doubling participation, wildcats you know starting off wildcats it was a quick way to get something on the ground make something happen be able to go internally and say hey look at the feedback on this you know parents say this is brilliant it's best thing they've ever seen you know getting local this is brilliant. It's the best thing they've ever seen.

Getting local people thinking differently about the women's game, Wildcats, was brilliant. If we'd wanted to go into schools, which we did, it had been three years before we had an impact. So it was how do you create sudden and meaningful impact? And then, obviously, I took over the England prior to 2017, the England set up sat under Dan Ashworth and then Dan went to focus on the men's, you know, Mark Lefters and I ended up with sort of the England team and then my whole world came into one.

Then I could write a strategy and as you know, in 2017 we did game plan for growth. We didn't call it a strategy. And in 2020, we did strategy and that strategy called itself inspiring positive change. And that's what we were all committed to as a group of people, which was let's use this sport to drive a new vision for the game. The players have always been committed on legacy. They've always been keen to be supportive of legacy. From the day I met them, they understood their responsibility. But it was how did you create the Everest of women's football? How did you make that mountain? Tough to climb, but something everybody wanted to climb. And a lot of that was affecting hearts and minds and again as a leader quite often it's not the mechanics that you need to be good at it's persuading people of the vision. The vision is

possible and if you come with me on this journey. You know when I first started at UK sport and we were 10s in the medal table and I told governing bodies we could be second or third in the medal table and I won't say they laughed at me but they virtually did and I said no we will and over six months I worked at it and worked and worked it till everybody was going actually you know this might be possible and it was a bit the same in football the difference was there was a much stronger culture to push it back and I had to keep pushing forwards and I could feel myself getting pushed back and then I'd walk again. Not from Martin, he was terrific as has Mark Bullingham been. Both have been excellent CEOs for the women's game in terms of support. But there were people

in there who really weren't even sure they wanted the women's game to be successful. I mean I suppose the culmination of that is winning the Euros, right? Like that's when is that the moment when everything feels like it's come together? Is that the proudest moment of your career? I mean, I'm looking at that line sitting alone on the podium, while the players did their lap of honour, I checked myself that it wasn't a dream, tried to make sense of it always that are you processing that victory for what it represents more broadly. Yeah, I think that was an amazing moment when all I could think about was all the difficult moments, all the times of self-doubt, all the feelings of anxiety just dissipated and I was sitting there thinking this was what this was all about. One was just the sheer joy

for Ellen and Chloe and Millie and Rach and everybody, that their joy was wonderful, it was palpable. It was like, I suppose, I've never had children, but it was like a proud parent watching their kids do something really exceptional and being so proud of them. And Serena, I mean, not that I'm her parent, but you know, just proud for all of them. But the second was looking at that audience of 87,000 people and thinking, wow, you know, I wanted to change lives. I wonder how many we've changed today. I think the next day on the bus maybe topped it for me in terms of my pride in the players, but my pride in the vision that somehow I've managed to share, which was, you know, I think I've said this to the players a number of times,

which is winning is wonderful. And at that moment, it's the greatest feeling you'll ever have. Your parents, the people who coach you, the people who taught you, your neighbors, anybody who knows you, they'll enjoy that moment, but that moment passes really quickly. It's what you do with the platform that winning gives you that makes you a great person. And I think that was pretty special to see them do that. Your values and your motivations are very, very clear throughout the book, and they seem to run the course of your whole career and your whole life. And you're also in the book, you lay out what you think is needed for the women's game

to continue to develop and be successful. How important is it for those values to be maintained during this next period of growth, do you think? It's absolutely central. You know, if the women's game drops into being a mirror image of the men's, it'll be a shadow and it will remain in the shadow. It's going to take a lot of courage, a lot of good leadership and I don't doubt Nikki or Holly, you know, that you couldn't have two better women who were driven by a vision to make this work and their team. I think the culture and the values of the women's game have to be maintained.

If we lose it, we just become a sort of poorer version of the men's game, and that's not what this is about. This has its own distinctive value for girls and women across this country. You know, and you only have to look at so many of the issues that confront girls and women now in society as a whole, not just in this country but around the world. Sport has to be a beacon. It has to be a beacon that shows that it's possible for women to be great athletes, great coaches, great referees, great leaders, great administrators. It has to be a beacon. And that beacon has to be that we do it our way, we lead our way. We're not copying what other people have done. We're learning from what other people have done because we have to. But we're setting our own course and that is really important and it will be tough. I do not doubt it will be bumpy and it will be tough. But I feel in Nicky and Holly, we've got two people who will make

the decisions that are right for women's sport and the women's game. I really do believe that. Continuing on from that, what are your hopes for the future of the professional game in England? Well, I think we've all got to have the same ambition, which is that it is financially sustainable in its own right. How quickly we get to that place, I think, is still in debate, but it must be able to stand on its own two feet.

And while there are many positives to have been taken from the men's game, one of the areas we don't want to fall into is a game that operates on a debt-based system. We've got to find a way to make the game sustainable. And the other thing is we've got to have players at the heart of every decision we make. And I'd want people to come to want to play in our league, not just because we give them better salaries, but because we take better care of them. We do look after them physically, mentally, medically, in a way that is second to none, it's world-class.

And I think there's a long way to go on that front at the club level. And that's partly because we haven't got the funding. You can't put all those people in place, you've got no money to pay them. So it's a circle of stuff that's got to get sorted. But I am optimistic. I do think the women's game will go from strength to strength. I do think, as I say, I think it'll be bumpy and I don't think all the decisions will

please all the people. But at the end of the day, I believe the women's game will stay distinctive, I hope it does, and will set a very different course than the men's game, which it's got to do to be viable, but also to provide the environment for women players to get the best out of themselves. Yeah, I think we all hope that too. And finally Sue, what's next for you? Well, you know, I retired for three weeks. And then I took on this job as chair of England Netball. Very different environment, let me say. Obviously not anything like the resources available. Massive, passionate, committed, enthusiastic people.

Fast numbers of girls and women playing the game. A lot that can be done. This week we launch our own Netball Super League with eight teams, which is a professional league. The professional league in Australia is working really well. Ours has got a long way to go, but we are launching it. We're on our way. We've got broadcast coverage improved massively, Sky going to cover every game. So we're making progress, a lot to do and I just hope it's another platform on which we can change a lot of girls and women's lives for the better. So the mission continues,

it's just we're catching and throwing now rather than kicking. You're never going to stop, are you? No, not really. Well, I will because unfortunately it's a bit over. But yeah, no, I mean, you know, why would you stop? I was saying to Sophie, I think you've got another good 50 years in you. Oh Lord, no, I don't think so. 120. I don't think so. I think I'll make that music. I don't know, you've broken every other barrier in the book. You might as well make that one too. Thank you so much for taking the time out to chat about the book. We both really enjoyed it and I

think it's really valuable as well to have so much of that legacy and work behind the scenes that went on, laid down on paper as well. And I don't think people really know the, you know, kind of how motive driven you are and how belief driven you are. And I think that's really, really nice to get on paper as well. So yeah, really appreciate your time. Thank you, Susie.

Appreciate talking to you both. Thank you. This is The Guardian.