- So What if I Hog the Ball? is dedicated to Eudy Simelane
Following on from my blog about Jenny-Jane Bayliss, my angry, pink-hating character in So What if I Hog the Ball? I thought I’d talk about dedications. Dedicating a book is quite a personal thing to me and I don’t dish them out lightly. I try to make each dedication appropriate to the title. The first book in the Girls FC series, Do Goalkeepers Wear Tiaras?’ for instance, is dedicated ‘To Robert Tingle - a promise kept.’ It’s a bit cryptic, I know. Readers don’t have a clue who Robert Tingle is or what the ‘promise kept’ means. I’ll tell you. Robert Tingle was a Year 5 boy I met on a school visit in Lancashire as part of the Shout About Books festival when Girls FC was but an idea I’d had that nobody, until then, had thought was a goer. Robert, bless his generous heart, said he thought a series about a girls football team was a great idea and that he’d give me all his pocket money to fund it! I was so touched by his belief in me that I promised that I’d dedicate my first book to him, should it ever get published. Et voila!
For completely different reasons So What if I Hog the Ball? is dedicated to Eudy Simelane. Simelane was the captain of the women’s South Africa football team until her death in 2008, aged 30. Eudy died in tragic circumstances. She was murdered on her way home because she was gay and because she played a ‘man’s’ sport. The killers are now in jail, thank goodness, as the case caused such outrage. A few years ago the culprits wouldn’t even have been brought to court as many judges would have said she deserved it. As Jenny-Jane is a tough cookie having to fight her corner in a family where the men rule the roost and she’s mocked for being a ‘laddy-lass,’ dedicating Jenny-Jane’s book to Eudy Simelane seemed fitting. And although it is a co-incidence that So What if I Hog the Ball? came out a month before South Africa hosts the World Cup, it’s good timing too. South Africa (indeed most of Africa) does not have the best of records when it comes to its treatment of women and girls by many of its disenfranchised men.
I’m glad to see that there are schemes trying to remedy this negative image, however. A piece in Saturday’s (5th June) Daily Telegraph called ‘Game For Life’ reports on how football is being used by some charities to encourage girls’ fitness and to spread the word about HIV and AIDS (rife in Africa). Girls who play sports (and this is true throughout the world) are more likely not only to be physically stronger and fitter than those who don’t but also to have higher self-esteem and be more independent. Such girls, it is hoped, will have more confidence to demand respect in their future relationships. 18 year old Prudence Mgele is one example. Nicknamed ‘Danismo’ because she’s so skilled on the pitch, she never knew her father, her mother was killed when she was ten and she was forced to live with an aunt and uncle who abused her. The charity ‘Lovelife’ allowed Prudence to escape from that background, gave her a safe home and sponsors her football. Football is what she lives for. ‘I need to play football. I have to play football.’ Same as Jenny-Jane.
Romania Glad Stars an all girls team set up with the aid of charities such as Lovelife and sponsored by the South African government. Donations from football clubs such as Arsenal provide much needed kits.Picture courtesy of Telegraph Magazine
